The human mind I believe is composed of many voices and attitudes. In “First Person Plural” Paul Bloom gives an interesting example that stood out to me. It was the incident about setting up the coffee machine for the next morning. He states “When I get up and there’s no coffee ready, I curse the lazy bastard who shirked his duties the night before.” I found this interesting because it was as if he was a new person looking at the situation in a new perspective. After I read that it made me dig deeper about my everyday thoughts and decisions. I’ve realized that it’s an internal conflict in my head between multiple minds and personalities. When you read that sentence it might’ve made you think that I’m crazy right?
I believe our mind is composed of different versions of ourselves, each of them speaking their opinions to you depending on the situation. For example, say that I’m in an amusement park about to ride on a rollercoaster. Before I get on, the anxious and nonchalant side of me are at battle. The anxious side asking questions, “What if the ride breaks down? What if I die on this?”. The calm side of me is trying to ease the anxious side, trying to think of the positives of the situation to make it worth getting on the ride. Small scenarios like that we don’t really pay attention to until we actually sit down and think about it. It is an everyday conflict in your head between different forms of yourself, an ongoing deranged battle that helps us make key decisions in our lives.
Agreeing with Maleke, I also believe with the idea of the brain being made up of many different ideas, personalities, and opinions is actually a real thing. I believe that I am made up of multitudes and that everyone else in this world with a conscience is made up with multiples as well. Paul Bloom author of First Person Plural states in his essay that science says we as people, have imaginary conversations with ourselves in our heads and “each of us contains multiple sleves.” A point that stands out to me in this essay is when Bloom is stating the history of this theory and finds a quote from a philosopher Walt Whitman that says “I am large, I contain multitudes.” This stood out to me because I can compare myself in a way that I believe that there are multiple attitudes of myself in my head and the ideas or thoughts pretty much fighting it out until a final conclusion is made which is the final choice in the real world. Thinking about everyday life, there is never a time when I am making a decision do I have one individual solid thought, but rather I have a million thoughts running through my head all at once. It is because of those instances, that I know I am made up of multitudes.
ReplyDeleteThank you for your post.
ReplyDeleteAlthough the essays give many scientific evidences that are challenging, I still believe that we are composed of individual consciousness and a collective mind. According to Paul Bloom, which I agree, “Personality also changes according to situation; even the most thuggish teenager is not the same around his buddies as he is when having tea with Grandma.” I believe we occasionally changes our behaviors to face different situation such as to offset painful feelings or mask our true persona; however, we don’t own multiple personalities. It is not an expression of our true selves, but rather our egos: how we wish to see ourselves and for others to see us, as opposed to who we truly are. And we are individually different. We are aware that there are individual differences within one social group. They arise from the interferences of social circumstances and organic experiences which are not the same for various individuals. The collective thoughts exist and realized only in individual consciousness. Thus, we are not created by multiple personalities but by different aspects of one troubled personality. Since we each possess a persona and a conflicting unconsciousness, we all suffer in a sense from split personality. But nevertheless, our thoughts and feelings are genuinely and individually our own.
I agree with your position on whether the human mind is composed of many personalities. The author of First Person Plural writes, “Sometimes one self can predict that it will later be dominated by another self, and it can act to block the crossing—an act known as self-binding, which Thomas Schelling and the philosopher Jon Elster have explored in detail. Self-binding means that the dominant self schemes against the person it might potentially become.” Paul Bloom gives an example of self-binding by illustrating how someone who is following a strict diet may only buy small portions of food to avoid over eating in the future. Personally, I can relate to Paul’s interpretation on how self-binding proves we have multiple selves, because I’m constantly self-binding to keep future me on track.
ReplyDeleteThis isn’t always successful though because I am so good at coming up with justifications to get myself out of doing things. Paul also addresses this part of multiple selves when he says “We bribe and threaten and cajole, just as if we were dealing with an addicted friend. Vague commitments like “I promise to drink only on special occasions” often fail, because the Bad Self can weasel out of them, rationalizing that it’s always a special occasion.” I’m constantly telling myself that I will finish my homework, then I convince myself that since I’m tired it’s not a good idea to do my homework since I will probably do very sloppy work. In short I blame my other selves for me not getting work done.
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ReplyDeleteI agree with Jensen, I do not believe that we are made up of different multitudes. I believe that we composed of one individual consciousness. Like Jensen says "we occasionally change our behaviors to face different situations. For example; in First Person Plural, Paul Bloom says "if you ask people about their greatest happiness in life, more than a third mention their children or grandchildren, but when they use a diary to record their happiness, it turns out that taking care of the kids is a downer." We act different to fit in with a different group kind of like the thuggish teenager example. Using myself as an example, I would never act or say the things I say with my group of friends while I am with my group of friends around my family. We change the way we are and things we say depending what kind of situation we are in. Although we may act different sometimes I do not think it is because we have multiple personalities, but because we choose to change around different groups to try and fit in
ReplyDeleteI have to disagree with having multiple personalities, but I don’t say its completely wrong. When I think of a personality, it’s usually in the singular. Like “My personality” “his personality” “her personality”. But at the same time in the common experience book, the author of the book discusses coping with the violence of war by describing having multiple personalities. He said that he has a side of him that violent, and killed many people in war, even celebrated kills. But he also has his everyday side which has a family, has guilt about his actions in war, is philosophical, is normal. This to me made a lot of sense, especially because I otherwise could not understand how soldiers coped after war. On the other hand, the separate personalities may just be parts of our one personality. We have grey areas, we don’t just simply fit into personality types like logical, free spirited, selfish or daring. Maybe someone is logical when it comes to being on time, free spirited when it comes to career decisions, selfish when it comes to food, daring when it comes to hair styles. These are traits of one personality, not necessarily completely different personalities. For these reasons, I side with having one personality more with multiple personalities.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Paul Bloom's position on humans having multiple personalities. I believe that this principle backs up the concept of id, ego, superego, and our inner struggles. The author points out that this idea is nothing new, and the philosopher, Plato believed in the idea of humans having multiple selves. When I choose to stay up late at night when I know I have to get up early in the morning for class the next morning and I wake up super tired the next day, I wake a new person and I become angry with myself ( a different person) for not going to sleep early enough. I like how the author wrote, “First, contrary to some stereotypes, children who have imaginary friends are not losers, loners, or borderline psychotics...And third, the imaginary friends are genuinely different selves. They often have different desires, interests, and needs from the child”. I believe the concept of having multiple personalities in our head contributes to why kids have “imaginary friends”. They notice these because they don’t know how to approach and grasp the idea that they do have many personalities—personalities that fit adapt to the different situations that they are placed in. It’s normal to hear kids have imaginary friends. Society is quick to classify them as being mentally ill, being loners, or being losers because it’s normal and many kids go through the same stage. I contribute the idea of having multiple personalities to why people often have inner struggles, addictions, mental illnesses, etc.
ReplyDeleteHonestly I have to agree with your stand point how you explained of how our human brains functions when we have “voices and attitudes”. There are reasons why we have those different personalities when we are in a different situation or encounter. Like when you explained about the roller coaster topic, there would be times that I would get nervous on a ride and have my mind thinking if I’m going to make it out alive after the ride. This gives more of an emotional and mental stage when we encounter certain things that make us wonder what we are really thinking about. It’s what the beauty of our brains really work when express our emotions that tend to give our personalities. I do also agree that we have to “sit down and think about it”, but at the same time we have to wonder what our minds are really telling us. Sometimes our emotions can take over our minds that can change our personalities that can lead to a negative perception towards the people we know. Overall, our emotional and mental stages take over our minds that define us as a person and we need to understand that we can control it by noticing what is really is going on in our personal lives.
ReplyDeleteHowever attractive your stance comes across Maleke, I must disagree with the general assumption you’ve come to. Although it surely seems as if these internal conflicts we have and lack of a straightforward, beneficial decision prove we have ‘different forms of [our]selves’, it would be much easier to define ourselves as a whole and simply categorize our brain and its functions as having different attitudes. For example, in First Person Plural, Paul Bloom states some scholars say, “[the brain] contains a part that constitutes a person, a self: the chief executive of all the subsystems”, which I would agree with, because although you could declare us as individuals being made up of different parts at the highest level of consciousness, moving the parts down the hierarchy and putting them under a singularity – ourselves – comes across as much less radical and much more consistent for the purpose of decision making and preserving identity. Conclusively, you referenced thought-provoking examples made by Bloom, but when analyzing them you must move your perspective farther away from yourself, and connect your ideas to support a thesis based on effectiveness and not fascination.
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