Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o published “Decolonising the Mind” in 1986. David Guignion shares a 2-part summary analysis of the work on his Theory and Philosophy site.
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s book Decolonising the Mind centres on the profound impact of colonialism on language, culture, and thought. It argues that imposing a foreign language on colonised people is a key tool of imperial domination. This linguistic imperialism leads to colonial alienation, separating the colonised from their own culture and forcing them to view the world through the lens of the coloniser.
Here are some key points from the concept of decolonising the mind:
Language is intimately tied to culture and worldview: Language shapes how individuals perceive and understand the world. When colonised people are forced to adopt the language of the coloniser, they are also compelled to adopt their cultural framework and values.
Colonial education systems perpetuate mental control: By privileging the coloniser’s language and devaluing indigenous languages, colonial education systems reinforce the dominance of the coloniser’s culture and worldview. This process results in colonised children being alienated from their own cultural heritage and internalising a sense of inferiority.
Reclaiming indigenous languages is crucial for decolonisation: wa Thiong’o advocates for a return to writing and creating in indigenous African languages. He sees this as an act of resistance against linguistic imperialism and a way to reconnect with authentic African cultures. He further argues that it’s not enough to simply write in indigenous languages; the content must also reflect the struggles and experiences of the people, particularly the peasantry and working class.
The concept extends beyond literature: While wa Thiong’o focuses on language in literature, the concept of decolonising the mind has broader implications. It calls for a critical examination of all aspects of life affected by colonialism, including education, politics, and economics.
It is important to note that decolonising the mind is a complex and ongoing process. There are debates about the role of European languages in postcolonial societies, and the concept itself continues to evolve. However, wa Thiong’o’s work remains a seminal text in postcolonial studies, raising crucial questions about the enduring legacy of colonialism on thought and culture.
“In order to gain and to hold the esteem of men, it is not sufficient merely to possess wealth or power. The wealth or power must be put in evidence, for esteem is awarded only on evidence.”
Thorstein Veblin, The Theory of the Leisure Class, 1899
In a world where our worth is increasingly measured by what we own rather than who we are, it’s time to question the hollow pursuit of conspicuous consumption. Thorstein Veblen, over a century ago, saw through the shiny façade of status-driven consumerism. He coined the term conspicuous consumption to describe a phenomenon that has only grown more insidious in our time: the wasteful, performative display of wealth and luxury to signal social standing.
“The world has enough for everyone’s needs, but not enough for everyone’s greed.”
Mahatma Gandhi
From luxury cars to designer handbags, we live in a society that encourages us to broadcast our economic worth at every turn. But what does this ostentatious display really achieve? Veblen would argue that it’s not about personal fulfilment or the intrinsic value of what we buy, but about outshining others—a relentless race with no finish line. We’re not buying goods; we’re buying validation, trying to purchase a place in an imagined hierarchy that is as fragile as the latest trend.
Peter Singer, the moral philosopher known for his advocacy of effective altruism, would take this critique even further. For Singer, conspicuous consumption is not just wasteful; it’s morally indefensible. His ethical stance, grounded in utilitarianism, compels us to consider the opportunity cost of our spending. Every pound spent on a designer item is a pound that could have been used to alleviate suffering—whether through combating extreme poverty, funding life-saving medical treatments, or addressing global environmental crises. In a world where preventable suffering and death are rampant, lavish spending on status symbols is not just misguided; it’s a moral failure.
“The money we spend on luxuries could be donated to help people in need and thereby reduce avoidable suffering.”
Peter Singer, The Life You Can Save, 2009
Singer’s principle of equal consideration of interests demands that we weigh the impact of our actions on others as seriously as we consider their impact on ourselves. When we choose to engage in conspicuous consumption, we’re prioritising superficial self-expression over the tangible needs of those who are suffering. It’s a glaring contradiction to claim we value human life while squandering resources on goods that serve no purpose beyond ostentation.
The issue with conspicuous consumption isn’t just its superficiality—it’s the economic and social rot it perpetuates. It sustains a cycle of pecuniary emulation, where those lower on the socio-economic ladder are pressured to mimic the consumption patterns of those above them. The result? A society locked in an absurd competition, where individuals drown in debt just to keep up appearances, and resources are squandered on goods that serve no practical purpose other than to flaunt.
But why should we care? Isn’t spending on luxury just a harmless personal choice? Not quite. Every pound spent on a status symbol is a pound diverted from something meaningful—education, healthcare, the environment. When the affluent engage in extravagant spending, they set a toxic standard, promoting the idea that personal worth is tied to material excess. It’s not just bad taste; it’s bad ethics, bad economics, and bad for the planet.
More disturbingly, this drive to display wealth erodes the social fabric. It deepens divisions, creating resentment and alienation. The ultra-wealthy, insulated in their gilded cages, become oblivious to the realities faced by the rest of society. Meanwhile, those struggling to maintain the illusion of prosperity are left with the fallout—financial instability, stress, and a gnawing sense of inadequacy.
Veblen saw this trap for what it was: a hollow spectacle. Singer’s ethics give us a way out. He challenges us to shift our focus from self-indulgence to selflessness, from conspicuous consumption to conscious contribution. Instead of spending exorbitantly to bolster our social standing, why not use that wealth to create real, measurable change in the world?
We don’t need another luxury brand or another status symbol. We need a society that values substance over style, sustainability over excess, and human dignity over the incessant demand to buy more to be more. Singer’s challenge is simple: consider the true cost of your choices—not just for yourself, but for the world around you.
Conspicuous consumption is a dead end. It’s time to take a different road—one that leads not to a display case, but to a more equitable, thoughtful, and genuinely prosperous society.
“The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation.”
In the realm of existential contemplation, the notion of the ‘self’ is akin to a fleeting present moment. It flits into existence for a fraction of an attosecond, vanishing before our grasp. Much like the illusory present, the ‘self’ manifests briefly and then fades into the annals of the past, a mere connection of temporal slices.
When we traverse the corridors of time, we effortlessly speak of the ‘past,’ stringing together these slices into a continuous narrative. This amalgamation serves our language and thought processes, aiding idiomatic expression. Yet, it remains a construct, a fiction we collectively weave. It is akin to the frames of a movie, where the illusion of movement and coherence is crafted by arranging individual frames in rapid succession.
The ‘self’ follows a similar illusionary trajectory. It exists only inasmuch as we christen it, attributing a name to a fleeting instance of being. However, this existence is as fleeting and ephemeral as a mirage. We name it, we perceive it, but it dissolves like smoke upon closer inspection.
This existential musing reminds one of the fictional entity – the unicorn. We can name it, describe it, and even envision it, yet its tangible existence eludes us. The ‘self’ aligns itself with this enigmatic unicorn, an abstract concept woven into the fabric of human understanding.
In this dance of philosophical thought, published works echo similar sentiments. Renowned thinkers like Nietzsche, in his exploration of eternal recurrence, or Camus, delving into the absurdity of life, have grappled with the transient nature of the ‘self.’ Their writings form a canvas, painting the portrait of an existence that flits through time, leaving only traces of memory and illusion in its wake.
In conclusion, the ‘self’ is a fleeting enigma, a temporal wisp that vanishes as quickly as it appears. Like a raindrop in the river of time, it merges and dissipates, leaving behind an evanescent trace of what we conceive as ‘I’. The philosophical gaze peers through the mist, challenging the very essence of this ephemeral entity, inviting us to question the very fabric of our perceived reality.
Identity is a fiction; it doesn’t exist. It’s a contrivance, a makeshift construct, a label slapped on to an entity with some blurry amalgam of shared experiences. But this isn’t just street wisdom; some of history’s sharpest minds have said as much.
“There are no facts, only interpretations.”
— Friedrich Nietzsche
Think about Hume, who saw identity as nothing more than a bundle of perceptions, devoid of any central core. Or Nietzsche, who embraced the chaos and contradictions within us, rejecting any fixed notion of self.
Edmund Dantes chose to become the Count of Monte Cristo, but what choice do we have? We all have control over our performative identities, a concept that Judith Butler would argue isn’t limited to gender but applies to the very essence of who we are.
“I don’t feel that it is necessary to know exactly what I am. The main interest in life and work is to become someone else that you were not in the beginning.”
— Michel Foucault
But here’s the kicker, identities are a paradox. Just ask Michel Foucault, who’d say our sense of self is shaped not by who we are but by power, society, and external forces.
You think you know who you are? Well, Erik Erikson might say your identity’s still evolving, shifting through different stages of life. And what’s “normal” anyway? Try to define it, and you’ll end up chasing shadows, much like Derrida’s deconstruction of stable identities.
“No such things as selves exist in the world: Nobody ever was or had a self.”
— Thomas Metzinger
“He seemed like a nice man,” how many times have we heard that line after someone’s accused of a crime? It’s a mystery, but Thomas Metzinger might tell you that the self is just an illusion, a by-product of the brain.
Nations, they’re the same mess. Like Heraclitus’s ever-changing river, a nation is never the same thing twice. So what the hell is a nation, anyway? What are you defending as a nationalist? It’s a riddle that echoes through history, resonating with the philosophical challenges to identity itself.
“I never can catch myself at any time without a perception, and never can observe anything but the perception.”
— David Hume
If identity and nations are just made-up stories, what’s all the fuss about? Why do people get so worked up, even ready to die, for these fictions? Maybe it’s fear, maybe it’s pride, or maybe it’s because, as Kierkegaard warned, rationality itself can seem mad in a world gone astray.
In a world where everything’s shifting and nothing’s set in stone, these fictions offer some solid ground. But next time you’re ready to go to the mat for your identity or your nation, take a minute and ask yourself: what the hell am I really fighting for? What am I clinging to?
I’ve been reading David Benatar’s Better Never to Have Been, which I expect to review presentlyhave reviewed, but that’s not what this post is about. In it, I happened upon the Non-Identity Paradox asserted by Derek Parfit. In essence, the argument affecting three intuitions runs like this:
Person-affecting, intuition. According to that intuition, an act can be wrong only if that act makes things worse for, or (we can say) harms, some existing or future person.
A person an existence, though flawed, is worth having in a case in which that same person could never have existed at all, and the absence of that act does not make things worse for, or harm, and is not “bad for,” that person.
The existence-inducing acts under scrutiny in the various nonidentity cases are wrong.
The first intuition is my interest: an act can be wrong only if that act makes things worse for some existing or future person. In particular, relative to the future person.
I’ve long held that private property is immoral. One reason is that it favours an extant person over a non-extant person. It also favours humans over non-humans, but I suppose that’s an argument for another day. Plus, it appropriates common public property into private hands—and by ‘public’, I don’t mean property of the state, which is of course just another misappropriation but at a higher level
I believe that this intuition hones the edge of the extant person, person-affecting, argument insomuch as it puts future persons at a disadvantage relative to existing ones.
Nothing more to add. Back to reading Benatar. Thoughts?
I readily admit to being provocative, sometimes edgy, and polemic, but not without qualification. I keep coming across Strawson’s work, and I agree with much of it, though I feel he’s an edge case in the eyes of many. Even when discussing Strawson’s views with others, I get ‘the look’, this incredulous half-cocked quizzical glare.
In fact, I am reminded of an online conversation altercation I had recently on the topic of identity, cutting to the chase, here’s the big reveal:
You are intentionally being contrarian for no reason other than attempting to appear worldly and intellectually superior.
All living people have an identity. Every single human being. It’s not a philosophical argument. It’s basic vocabulary. Just because another culture has a different name for it, doesn’t make it untrue.
Out of courtesy I’ll withhold the ‘identity’ of this individual, save to say it is an undergraduate.
I think it’s obvious to consider the notion of identity to be self-referential. I am supposed to have a self with some concomitant identity, and so are you. According to the dictionary definition, shared by the student I engaged with, individuals possess some distinguishing character or personality. This is vague. Presumably, there needs to be some constellation of characteristics to make them distinguishing. I don’t suspect that I’m allowed to be identified by non-distinguishing features.
I’m imagining a Ku Klux Klan meeting somewhere in America. Seeking ‘Sam’, I ask the doorman where I can find him. He knows Sam and conveys that he’s a white guy wearing a white sheet with a pillowcase with eye holes.”
Never mind, perhaps I should have referenced penguins. I suppose that’s why they tag them. Is that their identity. It doesn’t feel right. I’m rambling.
Identity is predicated on the notion of the self. I’m partial to Strawson here, but I think I am somewhere in the middle. I understand that the standard narrative is that we construct a narrative to represent our self. This creates a heuristic. But life is not a story.
The problem with this concept is that people configure this narrative differently. Using video vocabulary as a reference, I can think of several approaches straightaway:
60 FPS (frames per second)
15 FPS
Dropping frames
There is a memory component. I can also think of only capturing high-lights, low-lights, or some combination. My event-triggered home security camera system captures certain movement and sound, but different cameras capture different frames under different conditions, for differing durations, at different intervals, and at different fidelity. Moreover, it also captures certain aspects of any given frame.
Add to this false memories and misremembered content as well as conveyed narratives that you include in this composite. Examples from my life are stories I heard my mum telling her friends over and over as I was growing up. I have no native memory, but if I were to reconstruct a sense of self, I’d want to include them with native memories.
Memories of my early life are fragmented, and I don’t remember anything before age 5 or so. And even then, I can recall maybe 2 or 3 events unprompted. If asked if I remember this or that event, I may or may not, and it might be true or not.
I can’t claim the same lack of continuity as Strawson, I do feel that it might be substantially weaker than that of the general public. Just reflecting back top of mind, I remember these select events:
Relating my judo lessons to my grade three classmates
Being bored to tears in grade four because I had been demoted to a ‘standard’ class and being re-promoted to advanced placement classes when I ‘acted out’ due to shear boredom
Being adopted by my stepdad and taking his last name in grade four
My mate, Carl, also being adopted and taking an entirely new name—not just the last name
Various domestic abuse episodes
Choosing the coronet as a grade five school band instrument because my dad wouldn’t allow me to play the drums
After this, I can start to remember more and more, but not significantly so. I can remember certain classmates and interactions, teachers, friends and neighbours. If I stitched it together as a single filmstrip, it would be underwhelming and wouldn’t likely make much sense to anyone else. And who could even identify dramatic effect?
In stop motion parlance, there is a notion of keyframes and tweening. The aforementioned events would serve as keyframes. Tweening is the interpolation between these frames that morph and create the appearance of motion. This tweening never actually happened. It’s only realised during playback. How much of self and indentity are this filler?
At this point, I am thinking that what I am doing is setting the stage to say that the self is incomplete and imperfect, but I am leaving room for its existence. And of course, it exists. It’s a phenomenon, and we’ve labelled it. What more can one ask for?
I’m still trying to put it all together, but my ‘I’ keeps changing. How can I tame Haidt’s elephant?
“The mind is divided, like a rider on an elephant, and the rider’s job is to serve the elephant.”
― Jonathan Haidt, The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion
This infographic helps to articulate various notions of consciousness. Not much more to add.
I think I am partial to emergent theories, but I favour property dualism over emergent. The dualism employed in property dualism doesn’t feel accurate. It’s not dual so much as it just hasn’t been described yet.
I don’t think that physics can express or descriptively characterize everything that exists.
I want to accept the Buddhist notion, but I can’t seem to not differentiate.
I don’t feel I have enough information on the remainder of these. I could lean on the name and short description, but I feel this would necessarily establish me firmly in Dunning-Kruger territory. There may be even more hypotheses than are captured here.
Self and identity are cognitive heuristic constructions that allow us to make sense of the world and provide continuity in the same way we create constellations from the situation of stars, imagining Ursa Major, the little dipper, or something else. The self and identity are essentially expressions of apophenia.
Consider this thought experiment about responsibility. Rob decides to rob a bank. He spends weeks casing the target location. He makes elaborate plans, drawing maps. and noting routines and schedules. He gets a gun, and one day he follows through on his plans, and he successfully robs the bank, escaping with a large sum of money in a box with the name of the bank printed on it. Rob is not a seasoned criminal, and so he leaves much incriminating evidence at the scene. To make it even more obvious, he drops his wallet at the scene of the crime containing his driver’s licence with fingerprints and DNA on the licence and other contents of his wallet. He leaves prints and DNA on the counter where he waited for the money. This wallet even contains a handwritten checklist of steps to take to rob this bank—the address of the bank, the time and date. All of this left no doubt about who robbed the bank.
The self and identity are essentially expressions of apophenia.
Using this evidence, the police show up at Rob’s apartment to arrest him. They knock on the door and identify themselves as law enforcement officers. Rob opens the door and invites them in. All of the purloined money is still in the box with the name of the bank printed on it. It’s on a table in plain sight next to the gun he used. All of his maps, plans and, surveillance notes are in the room, too. They read him his rights and arrest him. Things aren’t looking good for Rob.
Before I continue this narrative, ask yourself is Rob responsible for robbing the bank? Let’s ignore the question of whether Rob has agency. For this example, I am willing to ignore my contention that no one has or can have agency. Besides, the court will continue to presume agency long after it’s been determined that it is impossible because agency is a necessary ingredient to law and jurisprudence.
Is Rob responsible? Should he be convicted of armed robbery and sentenced to incarceration? Let’s make it even easier. This isn’t Rob’s first offence. In fact, he’s been in prison before for some other crimes he committed. He’s no first-time offender. Why do you think that he’s responsible? More importantly, why should he be convicted and sentenced? What should his sentence be?
Consider that the money has been recovered, no one was injured, and Rob didn’t resist arrest. At first glance, we might consider both restorative and retributive justice. I’ve purposely made it easy to ignore restorative justice as all the money was recovered. This leaves us with retributive justice. What should happen to Rob? What would you do if you were the judge? Why? Hold that thought.
Let’s continue the narrative. All of the above happened, but I left out some details. Because of course I did. After the heist, Rob returned home and he lost his balance and hit his head rendering him an amnesiac—diagnosed with permanent retrograde and dissociative amnesia. Because of the retrograde amnesia, Rob can’t remember anything prior to hitting his head. Because of the dissociation, Rob has no recollection of anything about himself, not even his name. In fact, he now only responds to the name Ash. (This is where I debate whether to have Rob experience a gender-identity swap, but I convince myself to slow my roll and focus on one thought experiment at a time.)
Because of the retrograde amnesia, Rob can’t remember anything prior to hitting his head. Because of the dissociation, Rob has no recollection of anything about himself
To make this as obvious as I can consider, Ash has no recollection of Rob, robbing the bank, or anything about Rob. Ash doesn’t know Rob’s friends or family. Ostensibly Ash is a different person inhabiting former-Rob’s body. To make it even easier, Ash is not feigning this condition. So, let’s not try to use that as an out when I ask you to reconsider responsibility.
If my experience serves as a guide, if I asked you about your response to whether Rob was responsible and what his sentence should be, you would be committed to your same response and for the same reasons, so I won’t ask again.
What I ask now is if Ash is responsible and what his sentence should be. Keep in mind that we should be able to ignore the restorative element and focus on the retributive aspect. What should happen to Ash? What would you do if you were the judge? Whether your response has changed or remained the same, why would you judge Ash this way?
Here are some considerations:
Retributive justice might serve as a lesson to other would-be offenders.
The public may not believe the amnesia excuse—even though you, as judge, are convinced thoroughly.
Ash does not believe he committed the crime and does not comprehend the charges.
Ash was surprised to discover the money and gun and was pondering how it got there and what to do with it when the police arrived at his apartment.
If released, Ash would not commit a crime in the future. (My thought experiment, my rules; the point being that Ash was no threat to society.)
From my perspective, Ash is a different person. Sentencing Ash is ostensibly the same as sentencing any person arbitrarily.
The purpose of this experiment is to exaggerate the concept of multiple selves. Some have argued that there is no self; there is just a constructed narrative stitching discrete selves together to create a continuous flow of self-ness.
Is Ash responsible for Rob’s action?
I’m interested in hearing what you think. Is Ash responsible for Rob’s action, and why or why not? Let me know.
An idea that Galen Strawson mentions is that of the self and the case of self and selves. I’ll presume he also considers the case of no-self, but I haven’t heard his position on this—at least not yet.
About the No-Self
In the East, Buddhism teaches the notion of no-self or non-self. Anattā (अनत्ता) captures the idea of the everchanging. By this doctrine, nothing is permanent. Any separation from this is merely an illusion. In principle, this leads to the Four Noble Truths:
Life is suffering
Suffering is due to attachment
This attachment can be overcome
There is a path to achieve this (the eight-fold path)
Life just is suffering.
There are many incantations of this, but these four capture the essence. The points here are that life just is suffering. No one escapes this fate—not wealth nor power—because we become attached to these things. The self (or Ego) is another attachment. In identity politics, people tend to get upset when you don’t accept or at least identify with their self-perception. Personally, I don’t believe in identity, but I understand how it is meant idiomatically, so I can operate in this space.
About the Selves
What Strawson says (at the risk of misinterpreting him egregiously), is we have many selves. We are a composite of time slices. As he quipped, each Planck time moment is a new self. We tend to construct these selves into a single self—I suppose in the manner that a 2-hour film shot at 60 frames a second would consist of 432,000 frames and yet have a continuity analogous to a self.
Self, No-Self, Selves Depictions
About the Self
In the West, the notion of self is as ubiquitous and uncritically accepted as rights, private property, and Democracy. As their Declaration of Independence reads, some things are self-evident. This self is obviously constructed, so let’s look at how these selves are merged.
Selves to Self
Cognitive processes function to stitch these time-sliced selves into a cohesive narrative about ourselves. In fact, it tends to pick out keyframes of memorable events. Strawson posits that there are (at least) two types of people: Those who create these identity narratives, and those who don’t. Given the pressure toward self, especially in the West, it may be awkward or uncomfortable for those who don’t toe the line in this arena. And if you don’t abide to the notion of self, don’t worry, you’ll be burdened with at least one, more likely one per person you interact with—or observed by. As in the US justice system promises relative to legal representation, if you don’t have one, one will be appointed for you. (I’ll spare you another psychology cum pseudoscience rant.)
There are two types of people: Those who create these identity narratives, and those who don’t
Some religions attempt to solve compositing the selves into a self by introducing a soul that acts as a core. In some belief systems, this sole is even able to serve as a core for some future incarnation and some versions of karma carry with it burdens of past lives.
I am partial to the Selves interpretation. Some Gestalt and apophenia—not to be confused with apotheosis, albeit perhaps related—serve to do the heavy lifting. I don’t think that any (or at least many) people disagree with the idea, even if one is partial to the notion of a self, that a person is not the same at 1, 10, and 100. We can identify this person as Sanjit, at each observation, but Sanjit is materially different at each point. We just construct a narrative as in the case of the film frames. I can’t imagine it’s easy for a person indoctrinated into a world of ‘self’ that seriously grasping a sense of ‘non-self’.
It seems, I’m disrtracted and rambling at the moment, so I’ll end here. I think I’ve captured the essence of my thoughts.
Robert Kane argues that ultimate responsibility (UR) should guide us in determining whether someone is responsible for their actions. He gives the example of a drunk driver who gets into an automobile accident. If the actor tries to skirt responsibility because s/he was intoxicated, hence incapacitated, then [1] we can still rewind to an action taken that caused this intoxicated state and then [2] choosing to drive—a causal relationship articulated by Aristotle. This seems fine, but it’s a specious defence.
According to Kane
According to Kane—noting an issue raised by some—, it doesn’t require an assessment that a person could have done otherwise. This condition has numerous implications for free will.
For example, it doesn’t require that we could have done otherwise for every act done of our own will. But it does require that we could have done otherwise with respect to some acts in our past life histories by which we formed our present characters. Kane calls these self-forming actions (SFAs). According to Kane, [3] we act from a will that’s already formed, but [4] it’s our own free will by virtue of the fact that [5] we formed it by other choices or actions in the past—self-forming actions—, [6] for which we could have done otherwise.
Consider the drunk driver. If this were not the case, there’s nothing we could have ever done differently in our entire lifetimes to make ourselves different than we are—a consequence that’s incompatible with our being, at least to some degree, ultimately responsible for what we are. And that’s what I think free will requires.
Kane’s Challenge
I marked passages in brackets [n], to serve as a reference for my commentary here. Some of my responses may be repetitive, so I’ll try to make any redundancies recursive.
[1] Kane suggests that even if the person is incapacitated at the time of the accident—hence not responsible in the moment—, we can trace events back through time and pinpoint an event that caused the incapacitation. In fact, we can trace it back to the decision to imbibe in the first place. I have two objections here, but I’ll defer the second one to my next reaction.
Kane says we can rewind to some causal event. We are in agreement on this point, but I have a question: why stop there?
In engineering, there exists a concept called root cause analysis, and there is a concomitant heuristic called the 5 Whys. Essentially, using the DUI example as a discussion point, we can refer to the accident as event T0. Then we can trace back.
For the sake of brevity, I’ll ignore trivial or immaterial events such as s/he encountered a detour and so took an unfamiliar route or s/he fell asleep at the wheel, missing a green light, which caused a delay, which meant that she was in a place to happen to hit another vehicle—presuming that if s/he had been a minute ahead of her fateful schedule, there would have been no other vehicle to hit. This might be a logical line of inquiry, but let’s shelf it.
So, tracing back, at T-1, we find our actor already intoxicated and starting the car. At T-2, we find our actor drinking the last of multiple rounds of alcohol. We could trace back all the way back to, say, T-5, where our actor made the decision to take the first drink.
We may have difficulty pinning down where the impairment kicked in. Was it the drink at event T-2 or was it earlier, say, ay T-4, where all subsequent drinks were not assessed rationally? In any case, even if we stop at the last lucid state, T-5, then everything that follows can be said to be related to that event. But I have a problem.
[2] Firstly, if s/he was mentally incapacitated, how could s/he make a rational decision to drive or not? Secondly, even if we say that s/he became mentally incapacitated at event T-4, then the decision at that juncture was not rationally deliberated.
We could introduce a twist here, which is to assign culpability to the drink server. Some local statutes exploit this by making the barkeep culpable for serving a drink to an already intoxicated patron. Of course, this has the same issue noted above because we can’t say with any reliability whether the actor was intoxicated at T-2 or T-4. Let’s not get mired in this. This is not my biggest concern.
My key concern is in stopping there at T-5. Why not go back to why s/he even had the first drink? Why not go back to why she drinks in the first place? Why not keep going back. More on this ahead. Let’s continue.
[3] Kane says that the actor, the decider, already has a formed will. In this, he is introducing another concept—one of the self or the individual. Let’s continue, and I’ll get to that, too.
[4] Echoing the self, Kane doubles down and says that this self has a will, and the actor owns it. As such s/he is responsible for these willed actions, these caused actions. So, let’s dig in.
[5] Kane asserts that we formed this self by other choices or actions in the past that he calls self-forming actions. This is where in my mind this skein of logic unwinds.
Ignoring whether the self is anything but narrative convenience, why should one accept that the actor has any agency in this so-called self-forming? What proof do we have that this actor is just a victim of circumstances—from geworfen until event T0? Even without invoking determinism, I think it’s safe to assume that this actor is a consequence of, at least, hereditary and (monomorphic and polymorphic) genetic traits including temperament. Then we have structural influences, such as family, peers, institutions, and authority figures, societies and cultural norms.
It might be difficult to determine what percentage of the self are formed by this, but it would be disingenuous to defend this as self-forming rather than formed by some crucible.
[6] Kane’s final point is about whether one might have done otherwise. He downplays this point, and so shall I. If someone insists that this is important, I’ll address it at that time.
Enfin
I left out some key points that I’ll likely return to in future. Essentially, Kane is a traditionalist who pines for virtue and character, two concepts I feel of figments intended to act as tools of power maintenance. I feel this will get us down a rabbit hole, and I am rabbitted out, so let’s end here.
Philosophics 