令堂甚肥 -  具落雁之地心引力矣！

Once one proceeds from Descartes’ global scepticism, one either has to contend with solipsism, or presume that our sensory experience alludes to some underlying consistency in what really exists out there. I personally can find no rational justification to favour any particular ontological theory over another, but I have placed my faith in Materialism (as opposed to Dualism and Idealism) for its congruence with all my other beliefs.

It thus makes sense for me to induce that all events proceed either deterministically or probabilistically from their prior state. Given also that laws of nature do not change, there appears to be no way that one’s consciousness can have any influence in the outcome of things.

I used to think that belief in free will is a hindrance to true understanding of people, and that psychological egoism and utilitarianism combined would be superior to belief in free will in its potential explanatory power. But there are many problems with that approach – we don’t know the relevant coefficients, it requires too much tweaking of coefficients to work, scaling up to more than one person changes mathematical relationships dramatically, and it’s simply not practical because people are not good at calculations the way computers are (just like computers aren’t good at recognising human faces or associating emotions with facial expressions the way humans generally are).

So due to our biological-endowed strengths and weaknesses, our intuitions about ourselves and others based on free will are, for practical day-to-day purposes, the best things we have to understand ourselves and others (though sociologists are probably encouraged to use computers to simulate human behaviour). But recognising that free will is merely a heuristic that we are forced to employ due to our inabilities ought to make us more cautious about drawing conclusions from such intuitions and “off-set” them with science where necessary.

Thus, in our day-to-day interactions, it makes sense to talk about “self-restraint” and “conscientiousness”. It also makes sense to judge people as agents who know “right” from “wrong” and can choose as appropriate, and take responsibility for “their” actions. While it does get a bit grey when nature and nurture come into play, nobody really doubts the existence of a self that one has substantial control over under normal circumstances.

“Substantial control” is still not total control, though. Self-control seems to slip out when emotions rise, so control of emotions is important. I used to believe that I have been keeping my emotions under control, but now it seems to me that I just haven’t been feeling my own emotions strongly. Somehow, people realise that I am happy or angry or sad before I do. And upon reflection, it does seem that my facial expressions and body postures change to reflect my emotions outward before I am aware of it. Perhaps, I may even I have said and done things in an emotional state without myself realising it. Maybe I can overcome this by being more conscious of my facial expressions and body posture, infer my own emotional state, and thereby maintain greater control.

Control over thought seems to be more difficult, though(“Don’t think about a pink elephant”, for example). To me, studying involves looking at a piece of paper/website, and I either understand it or I don’t. Sometimes it takes longer, sometimes it happens instantly, sometimes it feels like it would never happen, but “I” have no control over it. As I walk along, thoughts just appear in the form of voices and sights and sounds (which I can thankfully distinguish from real sights and sounds). It might be possible for me, under the influence of a particular train of thought (caused by a certain book, for instance), to alter my environment that produces a certain way of thinking to attain a certain outcome (such as setting a goal, writing it down and displaying it at a prominent place). But still, that just makes my current self the outcome of a previous train of thought.

Streams of consciousness produce such erratic trains of thought, but perhaps it is only the self-enforcing ones that define a person. From my perception of other people’s intuition, people are supposed to be stable over time, that perhaps, there is a “self” to be found somewhere in consistent behaviour. But maybe this intuition is wrong.

It seems that stable and consistent thoughts and behaviours are created from trains of thought that lead to self-reinforcing thoughts and behaviour – and these sets of thoughts and behaviours become one’s identity. So, perhaps, personal identity is also merely a heuristic for “selves” to make sense of their own thoughts, behaviour, subjective perceptions and interpretations of their surroundings. Without a stable personal identity, it might not make sense for one to make promises or to set goals or to plan for the future.

I realise that my “time-slice” heuristic is only practical and consistent when combined with theories of stable personality traits (because otherwise whenever I try to plan something for my future, I wouldn’t have any way to tell if I might still want it in future). Then again, if I test my own personality to help me decide how to plan for my future, isn’t it just a train of thought that leads to self-reinforcing thoughts and behaviour, thereby leading to a “personal identity”? I’m not sure if I want a “personal identity” created this way – somehow it just doesn’t seem quite right.