The problem is isolating what would be instinct. Instinct to me, seems like a drive you cannot but help. So an instinct to eat perhaps, go to the bathroom, prefer that which is physically pleasurable or raises levels of oxyctocin, dopamine, and serotonin. However, those are so broad to not really be helpful to consider how they are motivating. For example, reading a book might be pleasurable, but to say that the pleasure of reading the book is instinct, is a bit more than a stretch as far as I'm concerned. — schopenhauer1
I think my main question was supposed to be how is it possible to do the act of choosing? — Andrew4Handel
The agony or the paradox of choice. Sometimes it's about doing the best you can, given your capabilities, and knowledge at any given moment. It can be rational, intuitive and involve a final 'leap of faith'.
https://www.ted.com/talks/barry_schwartz_the_paradox_of_choice — Amity
I do come from a fundamentalist religious back ground with regular hell and damnation sermons which I rejected in my late teens. So I have been forced into existential thought and decisions from day one.
Now as a non believer I have struggled to retain meaning after leaving the extensive rules and regulations and mandates of religion to making a new meaning from scratch. — Andrew4Handel
I'm with Tom Storm - We do the best we can.
— T Clark
But some people want more from life.
I probably do. — Andrew4Handel
You're making assumptions that the best you can be has to be banal. Some people make it exceptional. — Tom Storm
Sure; never said they were. Note also, that this idea of 'exceptional' will itself consist of a spectrum of possibilities, my idea of exceptional might be very different from yours, or Andrew's. — Tom Storm
I think these narratives hide the fact that we are here through our parents explicit choice often and it is not a neutral non ideological choice. — Andrew4Handel
Before I go, Andrew4Handel - How long have you been presenting the same questions on discussion forums? You remind me of someone, also called Andrew, from an OU course whose situation was as near yours as to be your twin brother. That was quite some time ago. — Amity
That was probably me. — Andrew4Handel
And Finally I think stoicism is just a cover for stifling dissent and rational criticism. — Andrew4Handel
And Finally I think stoicism is just a cover for stifling dissent and rational criticism.
— Andrew4Handel
Really? How did you come to that conclusion?
But perhaps that is for another thread... — Amity
Tell me more about how you think modern stoicism is commonly applied as a psychological tool. — Amity
I feel that we are in a nihilistic position where we can't can justify any of our actions by reference to rules, objectivity or teleology. — Andrew4Handel
The topic would better be called 'Deciding what to be'. What to do follows from what one is. — unenlightened
More than the best you can do?
You're not happy with what you are doing. So do something different.
Me, I'm going out to trim one of the shrubs in the back yard, and work out where to plant the second lot of corn.
It really is that simple. And that hard. — Banno
I think my main question was supposed to be how is it possible to do the act of choosing? — Andrew4Handel
I wonder if you watched the TED Video and have any thoughts. — Amity
The rules are not found, nor innate, but chosen, by you, and you have to choose.
Welcome to existentialism. — Banno
I think Cognitive behavioural therapy is an off shoot of stoicism. Training people to cope rather than resist or examine.
It can reframe reasonable responses to trauma as pathological. It is using a biased notion of reason to undermine ones own instinctual reason. I don't people would develop trauma for irrational reasons. — Andrew4Handel
And the rules that are chosen by you come already constrained in their sense by the contingent intersubjective community you are immersed in as well as your own history of habitual construals. — Joshs
Welcome to postmodernism. — Joshs
I think my main question was supposed to be how is it possible to do the act of choosing? [...] Life presents us with deep mysteries (I studied consciousness as part of a degree) I grew up in a really religious milieu. I won't be happy not knowing or not trying to know.
To me understanding why I exist and knowing how to act are fundamental. I already sit around getting fat on junk food pottering around the internet. That will end up being my existence. The path of least resistance. I see it as defeatism. — Andrew4Handel
My main dilemma on this thread though is not morality per se but choosing out of a seeming infinity of choices and with modern technology at our finger types such of the masses of information and behaviours on the internet we have even more choice daily. — Andrew4Handel
And Finally I think stoicism is just a cover for stifling dissent and rational criticism.
— Andrew4Handel
Really? How did you come to that conclusion?
But perhaps that is for another thread...
— Amity
I am judging by the way stoicism is applied. I am not referring to the whole philosophical school but the common usage as a psychological tool.
I am referring to the definition "the endurance of pain or hardship without the display of feelings and without complaint."
That was the top web search definition. — Andrew4Handel
This article highlights Stoicism’s similarities to modern mindfulness and acceptance-based CBT and its potential as an approach to building emotional resilience.
Socrates considered philosophy to be, among other things, a form of talking therapy, a sort of medicine for the mind... — Stoic Philosophy as a Cognitive-Behavioural Therapy
Here are some of the many issues I think are relevant in decision making.
1. Upbringing influences the kind of choices we can or do make.
2. Religious belief or atheism guides decision making
3. Physical disability effects decision making
4. Cognitive issues like Autism and ADHD, OCD, brain damage etc impact decisions
5. Decision often effect others from mild to major effects
6. Ignorance of the law is not an excuse. Consequences of actions don't care about motive.
7. there is a vast amount of information for sentient humans to process and that our brains do process.
8. Decisions are made at the level of consciousness and also with unconscious influences
9. Defence mechanism will influence choice justification.
10. At least one or more persons will disagree with your choices
11. We may or may not have free will and may never know.
123. Inaction and stoicism has consequences. — Andrew4Handel
Animals know what to do to live without some outside force motivating them. — T Clark
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