Skip to content
Carmelics
TopicsThinkersChangesContributorsLoading account…

    Carmelics

    A reasoning platform. Break down any belief into clear reasons, explore both sides, and weigh the evidence honestly.

    Navigate

    • Topics
    • Search
    • Recent Changes
    • Contribute
    • How It Works
    • Glossary
    • Thinkers
    • Contributors
    • About
    • Statistics
    • Terms
    • Privacy

    Database

    Statements
    —
    Perspectives
    —
    Topics
    —

    Press ? for keyboard shortcuts

    LoyalLoyalJusticeJustice
    Made withinDC&Austin
    Statements
    321,452
    Perspectives
    108,905
    Topics
    42
    Home/Original/inverse
    See Original
    Inverse View

    It is not the case that Human beings do make themselves, in the same garden-variety sense in which they make other things.

    ?Set your confidence on the premises below to see your aggregate.

    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
    ?
    • 1.Humans plant gardens, cook dinners, build boats, write books, and over the course of their lives re-invent and re-create themselves.
      ?

      Think about whether this reason is strong or weak

    • 2.None of these activities require making something 'from scratch', without help from anyone or anything else.
      ?

      Think about whether this reason is strong or weak

    • 3.It is impossible for human beings to make anything from scratch.
      ?

      Think about whether this reason is strong or weak

    Reasons Against

    2 perspectives
    Reason against 1 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Aristotle's account in Nicomachean Ethics II holds that character is formed through repeated voluntary actions, making agents genuinely causally responsible for their dispositions.
      ?

      Think about whether this reason is strong or weak

    • 2.Voluntary actions require only that the origin of motion is in the agent, not that the agent is uncaused — a standard humans routinely meet.
      ?

      Think about whether this reason is strong or weak

    • 3.Because character-shaping actions originate in the agent and are not compelled, the resulting self is authentically the agent's own product in the same sense a craftsman owns his craft.
      ?

      Think about whether this reason is strong or weak

    Reason against 2 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Harry Frankfurt's hierarchical model in 'Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person' shows that self-making consists in identifying with and endorsing one's motivational structure through second-order volitions.
      ?

      Think about whether this reason is strong or weak

    • 2.This identificatory process is a genuine form of authorship over one's will, requiring no exemption from causal history — only reflective endorsement from within the agent's own evaluative perspective.
      ?

      Think about whether this reason is strong or weak

    • 3.Since other forms of making (carpentry, writing) similarly involve working within causal constraints while exercising structured agency, self-making satisfies the same criteria without requiring libertarian origination.
      ?

      Think about whether this reason is strong or weak

    Next step

    Based on where you are in your exploration

    Strongest counterpoint
    Explore the most compelling reason on the other side.