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Music Addict
Join Date: Mar 2009
Posts: 1,711
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Cressidagater
thats completely absurd in my opinion; actions controlled by biology? Wth man. I am the only person left on the planet who is aware of what he does? Biology may create desire. But desire is no excuse for uninhibited action.
if you ask me, what you're talking about is mental illness, and people as you've described them here should be institutonalised and taught for as long as it takes for them to reach a level of conciousness and awareness over themselves and their actions. Otherwise, they have no quality of life. They're on autopilot.
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i'll take an excerpt from dr. saltzman on this one, he's wordier than i am 
Quote:
Thanks for your remarks about my website. I agree that my approach is largely unbiased, and as prelude to addressing your question I would like to explain why I think that is. It's simple really: my studies of human nature and the development of human personality have convinced me that no one chooses to be the way he or she is. Each personality simply arises automatically due to a combination of genetics and outside influences, none of which is chosen, but simply comes upon us like fate. A human being is conceived by a certain set of parents, in a certain time and place, within a certain economic, social, and political milieu. At birth, the adult-to-be already has a certain body type, certain mental and physical attributes, and, as recent genetic mapping has demonstrated, already the beginnings of a certain personality. This all develops in the womb, so obviously none of this is chosen by anybody.
Once the infant is born, he (or she) is totally subject to the influences of his surroundings, about which there also is no choice. Although the parents usually are the infant's first influences, soon the rest of the world enters into the equation, and since the child neither chose that world, nor has any way to control its leverage and authority, all of that functions as another set of unchosen, random factors in the development of character.
If this is clear, one should understand that the idea of "choice" is a false idea. For example, if I am presented with two possibilities for dessert, vanilla ice cream or strawberry ice cream, I may "choose" vanilla, and if asked why I made that "choice," I may say that I "chose" vanilla because I like it, and I do not like strawberry. But why is that a choice? When did I choose to like vanilla and not strawberry? Obviously never; that's just the way I am. Some real thinking about this will reveal that the same is true of all of our so-called "choices"; they are not choices at all, but responses to our original genetics modified by experience, and neither the genetics nor the experience was chosen.
Many people hate this idea and try to deny it because it seems to diminish the power of individuality and the importance of ethics and morality. After all, since ethical behavior seems to imply choosing one thing which is good or proper instead of another which is wrong or bad, if one cannot chose, how can one be moral? The answer is that if one happens to have come into contact with ethical ideas, one may be influenced to act ethically—so moral or ethical ideas are powerful and important, but they are not chosen. Such ideas simply constitute part of the environment—a small part, usually--which may or may not become an influence depending on random factors, the most important of which is, obviously, whether one comes into contact with the ideas to begin with.
Recent research has shown that the greatest influence on personality (after genetic makeup) is not parents, nor early training, but peers, and one does not choose peers, one is put into contact with them depending on where and when one is born and grows up, where one goes to school (if at all), if one is in Iraq in the army or not, etc.
I understand that this is a difficult concept for many people partly because it seems so counterintuitive, but more because the idea of agency is built into our language. A sentence has both a subject and a verb, but this is only a convention really. In most cases, the verb alone is the real story. For example, one might say, "I went to sleep," but the real story is that sleeping happened. No one did it really, it just happened. Another example: someone may say, "I speak," but how is the "I" any different from the speaking? One might just as well put it that, "Speaking happened." Grasping this idea also is difficult for many people, and so for our purposes here I will not go into it further (or one might more properly say that, "it won't be gone into any further), but it is an interesting field for thought, and, judging from your letter, you have the intelligence to appreciate it.
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taken from here: I Am a Psychopathic Soldier. Is There Any Help For Me?
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