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 suppose I might simply be a mechanical materialist. Much the same way as OP, I approach this topic in a more Buddhist way. To me things like intent seem like post-hoc rationalisation to delude ourselves (self in this case itself being a construct) into feeling in control (in the sense of the word as I mean it).
When it comes to control we are just in a semantic disagreement, i feel. I would simply replace the word with "intent in your replies and be mostly in agreement with what you’ve written.
I do reject the notion of dialectical materialist, although I must admit I am not very familiar with it. To me it seems like some form of compatibilism, but I should read more into it. I do not think thought has influence on the material.
Personally I find the predictive processing theory to best fall in line with my own experiences. And so to me, when we act on something like intent for future actions, I would rather say that intent is as an inner predictive model of a future state, whether or not it comes to be is out of our control, things will happen the way they happen.
It is all just atoms chugging along without emotion or thought behind it, intent is just a story we tell ourselves. You do not need intent to explain our actions, in fact it seems less complicated to do so.
intent seem like post-hoc rationalisation
Intent doesn’t have to be post-hoc. If you intend to do something, and then do it, what’s wrong with that? There’s no metaphysics there, your intent is a material part of you. It’s not free will in any sense.
I do reject the notion of dialectical materialist
You can, but dialectical materialism is the philosophy of Marxism and the most advanced worldview we currently have. If you want to read more about dialectical materialism here are some articles (article 1, article 2, article 3) or some books such as Lenin’s ‘Materialism and Empirio-criticism’ or maybe ‘The Dialectical Biologist’ by Levins & Lewontin (specifically the last chapter ‘Conclusion: Dialectics’ which you can read as a standalone article).
To me it seems like some form of compatibilism (…) I do not think thought has influence on the material.
It’s not compatibilist. It’s firmly materialist. That materialism, however, is not mechanical, and that’s what makes it more consistently materialist than mechanist thought. It doesn’t posit that our thought has an idealist influence on the material as free will posits. Our thought is firmly material, a property of the matter that makes up our brains and us as a whole. Our thoughts are specific motion of that matter. Therefore, our thoughts do exist and they can influence the material world, again, not in an idealist way, but through our actions. Neither our thoughts nor our actions are free in a free will sense; they are products of our environment, but they do influence the environment back. It’s not just a one-sided relationship.
Our “self” exists, but not in an idealist way. If it’s a construct, it doesn’t make it any less real or any less material. Our choices are not free, but we still do make them. It’s always our brain doing the thinking and choosing.
If you view the universe developing as the motion of matter guided by fundamental laws. That movement extends to us as well, as we are parts of the universe. Our thoughts result from that movement. We process information from our environment through our thoughts (or mind in general), then our thoughts influence our actions which influence the environment back. This is a dialectical relationship similar to the base-superstructure relationship in Marxist analysis of society. We have to be here and act to make our history, but our thoughts are material parts of us and thus parts of that whole dialectic. Our thoughts are determined by our material conditions, but we, along with our thoughts, are part of determining the world back. We are active parts of the whole and our mode of action is dependent on our thoughts. We interpret those material conditions through our thoughts which then model our future actions. All these interactions are multi-sided and dialectical, and often full of contradictions, especially if we’re not fully conscious of these interactions.
whether or not it comes to be is out of our control, things will happen the way they happen
We and “our control” (whatever it encompasses materially) are parts of the universe just as much as the things and the happening, we aren’t in a uniquely subordinate or passive role to other events or things. This doesn’t mean we can influence certain things as much as they influence us, but that, through our mutual interactions with the whole that is the universe, we can also influence the universe and its parts just like any other thing or event can (in terms of quality, not quantity). We are material just as everything else is. Our influence here is not subjective or idealist. Our perception of our influence is often false and exaggerated (when we think in terms of free will and idealism), but we still do have an influence just as any inanimate object or force might influence something else through the motion of matter, and it’s not correct to think of ourselves as uniquely without the ability to influence when everything in the universe has it.
It is all just atoms chugging along without emotion or thought behind it, intent is just a story we tell ourselves.
You are correct that atoms don’t move by thought, but thought does come from the motion of the atoms; it’s a material phenomenon that does exist. Don’t you see how your sentence here assumes that our thought is not material and therefore is apart from the rest of the world. The same goes for your sentence before about “thought not having influence on the material”. If something cannot have any influence on the material, it cannot also be material itself; our thought, however, is material, and as such can have an influence (even not counting our thoughts guiding our actions, which they do, they have an influence on a micro-scale of the molecules moving and bumping around in our brains that form our thoughts), but, again, not a free influence. In your model, our consciousness would just be a one-way “dead end” that the material world only interacts with while it doesn’t interact back in any way. How would we then even be aware of our thoughts at all?
For example, if you burn yourself on a fire, you will learn from it, and the next time you see a fire, you will think about burning yourself last time and avoid doing so again. All of this is purely material. You want to call it “all just atoms chugging along without emotion or thought behind it”, but thought is there in the process, it’s made from the motion of the specific atoms in our brains, and it has an influence. If matter organized in a specific manner to form us didn’t have these properties, we would get burned every time. Our thoughts (conscious and subconscious) are not a separate thing from us or our actions, the relationships between these are also dialectical.
From your model follows that we are just observing from outside the universe through the viewpoint of our bodies and commentating on events we see instead of us (us entirely, our thoughts, which are also just material parts of our bodies, included) being parts of the whole that is our universe. We “tell ourselves” many “stories”, which we might call social constructs, but we can see daily the influence these have on us, still without any sort of free will, metaphysics, or departures from materialism.
You do not need intent to explain our actions, in fact it seems less complicated to do so.
A priori disregarding intent as a factor in human behavior is a mistake. This doesn’t mean that our intent is a primary factor in our behavior or that we should specially focus on it in general, but our intent does exist. That intent isn’t anything metaphysical, it’s a material thing that’s part of us. You will find it impossible to explain human societies and behavior accurately without a dialectical materialist perspective. It was only through this perspective that the laws of social and economic development were (and in general, can be) accurately discerned.
