I totally agree. I did not mean to come across as a mechanical idealist. I didn’t think I needed to give a complex explanation of dialectics to make clear I wasn’t a mechanical idealist. Yes, wills and consciousness exist, my point is that they are illusory in so far as “we” think we have “control.” There is no “self” beyond the material world as the dominant mode of thought assumes.
Maybe it’s just a matter of language and not an actual philosophical difference, but I think there is still a philosophical difference.
There is no “self” beyond the material world as the dominant mode of thought assumes.
I agree, but I still think you’re making the mistake I’m trying to caution against in the sentence prior:
Yes, wills and consciousness exist, my point is that they are illusory in so far as “we” think we have “control.”
They are not illusory, they are material. And while the dominant mode of thought might assume we have more control than we actually do, it doesn’t mean we don’t have any control. We or our “self”, that is entirely part of the material world, does have a certain amount of control because it is a part of that same material world. This control isn’t separated from the material world, but a part of it. Your sentence here still sounds like only the material world has “control” and it exerts it upon us from outside, which would imply that we are different from the rest of matter, but in the opposite direction of the idealist free will notion.
I think that in your correct impulse to combat the idealist narratives prevalent today, you go too far in the opposite direction. Similar to how Plekhanov describes here:
No amount of patching was of any use, and one after another thinking people began to reject subjectivism as an obviously and utterly unsound doctrine. As always happens in such cases, however, the reaction against this doctrine caused some of its opponents to go to the opposite extreme. While some subjectivists, striving to ascribe the widest possible role to the “individual” in history, refused to recognise the historical progress of mankind as a process expressing laws, some of their later opponents, striving to bring out more sharply the coherent character of this progress, were evidently prepared to forget that men make history, and therefore, the activities of individuals cannot help being important in history. They have declared the individual to be a quantité négligeable. In theory, this extreme is as impermissible as the one reached by the more ardent subjectivists. It is as unsound to sacrifice the thesis to the antithesis as to forget the antithesis for the sake of the thesis. The correct point of view will be found only when we succeed in uniting the points of truth contained in them into a synthesis.
E: Also, apologies for neutral pronouns, but Voyager does not show pronouns.
They are not illusory, they are material. And while the dominant mode of thought might assume we have more control than we actually do, it doesn’t mean we don’t have any control.
I imagine they mean illusory as a matter of experience. In that we feel like we have free will, when we do not.
We or our “self”, that is entirely part of the material world, does have a certain amount of control because it is a part of that same material world. This control isn’t separated from the material world, but a part of it.
It is specifically because we are not separate from the material that we do not have control. Control implies volition/intent, which matter does not possess. It is precisely ascribing control to us that would set us apart from it.
To say that an individual could have acted differently given identical circumstances (i.e. rewinding to the time of decision) is, frankly, absurd. And this is the sense in which the other person is using the word “control”.
The only thing that Plekhanovs paragrah seems to convey (at least how I read it) is that individual actions have consequence. And while an individual has control in this sense, I do not see how it implies an individual has control in the sense that the other commenter is using the word.
It is specifically because we are not separate from the material that we do not have control. Control implies volition/intent, which matter does not possess. It is precisely ascribing control to us that would set us apart from it.
I’m not ascribing any metaphysical aspects here. We have “control” because we are active parts of the universe and we do exert influence on it. These relationships aren’t just one-sided. This one-sided view is wrong in either direction (free will or mechanical materialism). These are dialectical part-whole interactions. That’s the point I’m trying to make and that’s also Plekhanov’s point in that quote. The introduction of this largely undefined “control” in the last reply just confused things further. I take “control” to mean our influence on the world, not some metaphysical free will which no one here has argued in favor of. To repeat, I agree with QueerCommie that the dominant mode of though assumes a metaphysical free will aspect to this which is not correct.
And again, there is no need to have metaphysics to describe our consciousness. We do have intent and we are matter. These are properties of matter organized in a specific manner. Look at the surface tension analogy I used above. I don’t see why you assume that intent and things like it have to be some metaphysical qualities. Intent doesn’t have to mean something above material reality and it certainly doesn’t have to give us any power to act above or against material reality as free will would.
To say that an individual could have acted differently given identical circumstances (i.e. rewinding to the time of decision) is, frankly, absurd.
Yes, and no one here is claiming anything of the sort. The point, again, is that both the circumstances and us are parts of the universe. We aren’t in a uniquely passive role here. To quote Marx again:
Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past.
I think it’s still a language thing. We are the universe and the hegemonic view seems to be that we are outside acting in it. By “illusory” I do not mean that the phenomenon is not real, but that the (socially constructed) perception of it is not true to reality. I mean it from the Buddhist perspective that if you meditate on it enough there is not individual thing you can call what is socially conceived to be a self.
