A Few Questions

[Guest]

I have been thinking about and developing my philosophy lately. The main reference I have is my own mind. But I am not the only person that has a mind. To counteract my biases and advance my understanding, I ask that you answer a few questions. There are only six. The questions are not hard but I request that you answer them truthfully and lucidly as possible. Thank you.

1. What are you?

2. What is the self?

3. What is consciousness?

4. What is freedom?

5. What does it mean to own something?

6. What is the difference between a want and a need?

[xcriteria]

Great questions!

I'll answer them to the best of my ability tomorrow.

[WildFire]

Me too, classs ends in 3o seconds.

[SoulRiser]

Excellent topic... These questions are hard

1. What are you?
I am human, apparently. Sometimes I feel more like I'm an alien from somewhere else that ended up on earth by accident. But yeah, I consist of meat, bones, water and a soul (no, I don't know where it's hiding. I don't think it has a "place" - it's just kinda everywhere).

2. What is the self?
It's your own point of view... like, you can't go inside someone else's mind and see through their eyes and hear their thoughts, you can only do that with yourself. I think it's a combination of your brain and your soul (don't ask me how that works though)...

3. What is consciousness?
It's the parts of your mind that you have control over. Like you can decide what to think about, and how to think about it, that part is your consciousness. The stuff that happens behind the scenes is subconscious, like things that you do without thinking, and your instincts and reflexes. Your conscious and subconscious affect each other a lot (the subconscious affects the conscious the most, which is why it's handy to know what the hell goes on in there).

4. What is freedom?
Freedom is having control over your own life (within the limits of the physical realm and all that stuff - it'd be nice to fly, but oh well). Like, if you wanted to go walk down the street, and someone was forcing you not to, they'd be restricting your freedom. If you wanted to beat someone up, and someone else was holding you back, that wouldn't necessarily be restricting your freedom though (because by beating the other dude up, you'd be restricting his freedom [freedom to get up, walk away, not be hurt, etc]).

5. What does it mean to own something?
If you own something, you have exclusive rights to do what you want with that thing (use it, keep it, give it away, lend it to someone, etc). This is fine in general. But I think that there is a limit to how far this should go. Like, say, if someone owned a nuke, he 'technically' has the right to do what he wants to with it, but he could affect a lot of people with his decisions. So if what you want to do with something you own is going to affect other people, it'd be wrong to just carry on without asking them first. Also, if for example there were 20 people somewhere, and one of them "owned" a lot of food, but none of the others did, it'd be wrong if he kept it all to himself.

6. What is the difference between a want and a need?
A need is something that, if you didn't have it, you would be worse off in some way than if you did have it. A 'want' is a desire for something, even if you don't necessarily need it. Things you 'want' can be good for you, but they can also be bad. Things you need are always good for you (at least in some way). If something you want is going to cause problems for something that another person needs, then their needs come first.

.. I think these questions were put in this order on purpose ...

[Guest]

Thanks for the answers Soulriser.

Quote:.. I think these questions were put in this order on purpose ...

They were. I will outline what I've been thinking.

Capitalist Libertarians take self-ownership as a axiom and derive the rights of life, liberty, and property from that axiom. I also take self-ownership as a maxim but question whether the traditional definition of "self" is correct. For me, the self is a combination of the physical and spiritual. The spiritual is obviously the soul but the physical is far more than what is located within our skin. Our self is very affected by external conditions and because it is these external conditions that make you what you are, in a sense they are you.

This may seem ludicrous but it is similar to what is in our own brains. There is no difference between someone remembering from memory and someone reading from a piece of paper. Both people do not know anything until they access either the memory in their brain or on the paper. The mind is not a monolithic block but an ever changing combination of parts.

There is a difference between needs and wants. I define an object of a need as an object that sustains the self, and without which the self is harmed. Eating is a need because without it your body will die. An object of want is something that you desire to have. You can both want and need something. You can also need something but not want it.

I differentiate between essential and nonessential needs. Essential needs are those that sustain the self and nonessential needs are those that sustain the essence or personality of the self. For example, having food to eat is an essential need because without it the body will die. Your clothing is a nonessential need because "the clothes make the man", i.e. how you dress changes your view of yourself. Essential needs have a higher priority.

I also differentiate between general and specific needs. A general need is like food or the Earth. A specific need is like a piece of toast or some land.

Taking the ownership of external objects to its conclusion, all people own everything. You own yourself and everything is yourself so you own everything but because of the varieties of wants and needs, there are differing degrees of ownership. Ownership of objects is created by relatively how much of the object is the self, in other words: how much you need an object. (Note that you need everything because you need the universe.) Here are some examples:

• Everybody on Earth has virtually nonexistent ownership of a random asteroid because if it magically disappeared, nothing would change on Earth.
• All people have an equal share of the Earth as a whole because without it we are all dead.
• Starving people have a greater share of food because they need it more.
• A homesteader owns their homestead because they survive off of it.
• I have ownership of the Pepsi beside me because no one else needs it.[/list:u]
  
  These thoughts have arisen out of anarchist use rights driven to their extreme. These thoughts have also created some interesting conclusions. Need is ownership, and a baby needs a guardian, therefore it is the baby that owns the guardian, not the other way around!
  
  (This turned out to be more than an outlining, oh well.)

[xcriteria]

Alright, I said I'd answer them...

Can I have some more time?

I'll give a very partial reply now, but this is the sort of "assignment" that takes me a while to think through in serious detail.

1. What are you?
Just some organism. ::

Not only that, but a human organism! I'm a person! And a particular one, even!

If you want more detail, it's only $24.95 a month!

2. What is the self?
I see this as my sense of myself (yeah, I know, that's a recursive definition) plus my physical and "spiritual" self, as in my psyche/consciousness/"unconscious".

3. What is consciousness?
Consciousness exists on multiple levels. For example, cats are "conscious" but not in the way people (usually) are.

Have you read the wikipedia article on consciousness?

4. What is freedom?

Freedom has multiple aspects. For example, what is allowed legally/politicially is one aspect. Distinct from that is what one can practically choose to do. That ties into the whole questions of to what extent people have volition or "free will."

5. What does it mean to own something?

That means it's Kirby's?

Seriously, given your claim that everyone owns everything, give me a while to think about this.

6. What is the difference between a want and a need?

This one, I can give a decent answer to off the top of my head.

A want is some kind of desire... which could be vital to your life or completely arbitrary.

I think of needs like this: they aren't absolute. Something may be needed _for_ something else... for example, if I want to live for long, I have to eat. But I don't "need" to live past tonight. Hopefully I will. Hopefully I'll live for years. But in order to do so, I "need" to eat, drink fluids, etc. So I think of "need" in terms of, "in order to do X (or for X to happen), Y must happen (or you must do Y).

[Abandoning Ship]

1. What are you?

Human, but my insulin pump is hooked up to me and I depend on it to basically survive. That 'Technically' makes me a cyborg, right?

[Rebelnerd]

1. What are you?
Human, Homo Sapiens, person, guy, whatever you want to call it. Pretty simple really.

2. What is the self?
I think that its the physical being, as in the body, and of course the unique thoughts, memories, and neural energy patterns in the brain. Our past experiances also play a big part, because its the information and long lasting effects from them that make our psyches so unique.

3. What is consciousness?
Basically it's being self aware, as in knowing what's going on around you and knowing you exist. Although it manifests itself as the same matter and energy as anything else, its a complex and unique concept that exists outside the laws of the aforementioned matter and energy, just like mathematical concepts. This doesn't mean its magic or metaphysical though. Things like PI and an infinite straight line don't techniquely "exist," meaning they can't be seen, felt, or made from matter or energy, but matter and energy still do things based on the idea of what would happen if they did. Conciousness is the same. We react based on it even though its "nothing."

4. What is freedom?
The thing you've got to understand here is that "freedom" and "free will" are NOT the same thing. I think free will should be renamed, to something like maybe "random will" or "spontaneos will." Because free will gives the impression that not having free will means you can't make your own decisions. And that's not true at all; not having free will is a good thing. If the law of cuasality stands, and we'll assume it does here, then with free will then nothing could ever influence your thoughts. Not even you. You'd either be a braindead zombie, with your brain completly isolated from the outside world, or you would jump randomly from thought to thought, with no control over it at all. Without free will, the memories, past experiances, and to a degree genetics cause the chain reaction that is our thoughts. and although some would say that that means you're not in control of yourself, I think the information stored from those outside influences are what make us who we are. I don't believe that the human psyche is special and has free will or anything like that. But that doesn't mean we should be depressed, just remember that because of our greater complexity and abilities, like memory and conciousness, we are still much different from inanimate objects. An outside influence that hits you will be filtered through uncountable billions of layers, memories, thoughts, whatever and the effect will be completely different and radically unique, more so than if hit a rock or water.
Freedom, then, is when your unique internal chain reaction of thought can affect the world around it unimpeded by other beings.

5. What does it mean to own something?
Owning something is not just using or keeping something near you, its the ability to keep other people from taking it from you.

[i]6. What is the difference between a want and a need?[/b]
It all depends on the goals. For most of us, a need is something that is necessary for survival, and a want is something that is necessary for happiness. But for someone else, maybe a person with different goals, or an organization of some sorts, then the need would be money and a want would be...say, ice cream. The point is, it all depends on who you ask and what they're highest priorities are.