20/09/2023

Existentialism crash course philosophy youtube

How do we give values to things?

Values come from environment.

The self, me and the generalized other p. 23

- Me and the self are never separated

The I is the part of the self that’s in action

Anyone who becomes aware, who become self concious, has human qualities,

That is you become open to others people way of being/doing

This way of thinking of or doing will be challenged later on.

The me part is often the one that you see.

- I behave, act the way that was taught to me, from community.

The person who becomes self-aware is the person who adopts and observe its community.

Play
Free play; part fantasy, creativity, lost in adulthood

Coté; there is something in the child that pushes him to imitate and copy
- Symbolic, doing anything can be a symbol

Regulated games;
- Creativity has to be limited by rules and regulations,

why debates are so difficult,

- You need to have some sort of control, capacity to hold on,

Moment of self awareness

Taylor p.27

Clear definition of the self

- Moral identity, you are what do/believe in/ what you act on
- Moral, spiritual decisions we make for ourselves or for others,
Autonomy, relief of suffering and everyday life.

- Autonomy: laws have loosen up in order to allow people to make their own decisions
Believing that people have the right to make their own decision
- Respect of everyday life
- Suffering
- =three points of reference for Taylor to build our moral identity

We live for an ideal

- Symbolic violence, which is not physical violence

In class essay
Intro-body-conclusion
w/ thesis statement
on chapter 1 and readings
- French revolution
- Intro
- ASSIGNED READING

27/09/2023

Page 35 “personal identity relies on personal community”

Page 243: “the modern remaking of self involves in Taylor accounts some dramatic shift”…

Recognition in modern language, we could say that to love someone means to recognize their
desire and interests as reasons to restrict our own actions, because we experience them as
worthy or our support and care. If we can conceive of this form of moral self-restrictions in favor
of the other as a reciprocal occurrence, as is usually, the case when it comes to love, we find a
social form of the very same structure of mutual recognition.

234, perhaps the most basic transition has been the one incomplete as it is, ethics … the shift
from puttuing ….

Chapter one:

George Hebert Mead and the genesis of the self

“Our innermost world is born, shaped, and influenced by our interactions with our immediate
self?” p. 25
 - Small/ huge environmental changes shape us, forcing us to revision our position and
opinions and influencing our actions
- Events stimulate the creation and growth of the self; moral identity (Charles Taylor)

Historical notes
Mead’s theory of self-conceived within American pragmatism
= the testing of the truth of an idea, of a hypothesis, by its actual working.
Or
= a method for the practical evaluation of ideas, concepts, and philosophies, not from the point
of view of their internal coherence or rationality, but from the point of view of their “practical
consequences” [...] Pragmatism offers an answer to a question: how to forge ideas for acting
and thinking
Emerged out of dissatisfaction with the European approach

Taylor supports that’s Mead is too close to behaviourism to understand social self

The issue of American sociology lies in its pragmatic application

- Accurate actions are judged by their consequences
- Represents intellectual elitism rather than a method to understand situations individuals
face every day.

Mead urges pragmatism to assume a radical position

- “cognition is a process of finding out something problematic not of entering into a
relationship with a world that is there”
- Not possible; A debate forces us to remain conscious, meaning the process of searching
for a solution to a challenge

The Mind; Undoing Dualism

The subject and its environment remain inseparable, in constant interaction

- Meads social and interactive theory places the subject and its social milieu within an
interactive process.

Consciousness is physical and biological

- The mind is born within social relationships and actions
- The mind is an instant inside a process of consciousness, one that comes to be the
center of direct experience that triggers subsequent action

Stage of consummation: anytime we stop, reflect and think about what to do next, it is action.
From this reflexion, is action; what we see the result
- When we think, we stop our automatic pilot, we become conscious

When an action concerns the self, mind and body become one.
The environment we live in will call on us to act; within this relationship, the mind is created
and recreated.

Language: From gestures to symbols

Symbolic interactionist perspective:

- We use signs, gestures, and words that have acquired a meaning that calls us to respond
or not
- A gesture becomes symbolic when it represents the same thing for the person who
poses it and their interlocutor (intersubjective

Triadic relation
- A makes a gesture to which B responds and the response is what gives meaning to the
gesture (transfer is from A to A not A to B)
- A will then respond to its effect on B

Individuals adjust their responses to the actions and words of the other (self-consciousness)
Initial gesture doesn’t have any meaning, it’s the response

Building the Self

“Me” part of the self is born within a community

- Becoming an object for oneself: I can think and talk about and to myself
Anyone who becomes self-aware is someone who takes and adopt the attitudes of member of
his community

Free play: child imitates the people around him

Regulated games: laws and procedures

=generalized other
Playing at being someone vs taking roles in organized part

Ability to censor and control ones’s behaviour is a vital aspect of successfully reaching the stage
of the generalized other.
- Control is necessity of participation in dialogue and, more broadly, in civic participation
o Put on willingly as a team member

“I” is creative and aspires to that creativity that comes out when we face a problem
“I” is the moment described in Meads definition of the mind

The Making of the Unique Self

“I” reflects, monitors on the “me”.
- When “I” becomes conscious, it becomes a “me”
 - “I” is the active dimension and not the contemplative dimension,
o “I” emerges to find solutions and disappears in light of consciousness
o Therefore I is inseparable from me

Action: The Moment I Become and Actor

“I” is spontaneous part of the self that responds to eternal sensations and events

We can never catch ourselves in action because the minute we reflect, we have transitioned to a
stage of awareness
- How we act in specific moment clarify and redesign our personality

The self does not exist in isolation,

- It is born inside of social limitations

“the subject is truly the set of social relations that the sef internalizes as a result of social
intercourses”
- This is the self we bring to debates and protests.

Moral Identity: I am is defined by What I DO

Taylor posits that to develop an identity, we must have the ability to put our values and choices
into perspective, dig deep into our reasoning and turn this logic on itself.

Identity has two dimensions:

- Our position on moral and spiritual issues
- A social reference

Moral identity is constituted of autonomy, reduction of suffering and respect for everyday life

Autonomy:
Respect for human life must be connected to autonomy
- Respecting a person in modernity implies that some laws have relaxed to give people
space for autonomy
- Our dignity consist in autonomy, the ability of each person to determine for herself or
himself a view of the good life.

Reduction of Suffering

Everyday Life:
- The good life
- The notions of perfections are found within our lives, between the honorable and the
mediocre
- Most of us fear existential emptiness rather than divine condemnation
A notion of choice is intrinsic to the dimension of autonomy
- Our moral identity is formed within these choices concerning our everyday life
- In our life amidst challenges, we make decisions for ourselves and others,

Moral Identity: A work in Progess

- We define ourselves through groups, and then use them as reference for moral/spiritual
matters
Identity= how things have a significance for me and what issue I define as valid

Taylor argues that everyone thinks and acts within structures that contain an ideal
- Subject is a social product
- References are found in the social (the sum of our interactions)

Taylors definition of identiy has challenges:

- Theory vs practice: how we should conduct ourselves in a debate vs how we truly act in
one
- Self comes, not identity
- Recognition is the act that requires social control

Confrontational cooperation

Taylor suggests justifying our on any controversial question with a reasoned morality based on
conversations with our fellow citizens

The Luxury of Introspection

It is within debates on autonomy and reducing suffering that our moral identity is born

From our situation we make life decisions and within these options we aim for an idea that will
give us a sense of competence, self-esteem, and self worth.
- Problem arises when this idea is not recognized by other

Recognition
- Restraint and hearing the other is crucial to a debate

For Taylor recognition is part of the identity

25/10/2023

p.47
French Revolution made equal what had been deemed so far unequal.
Based on equality , fraternity,
Sexuality
Deemed immoral, unnatural.8

1/11/2023

Sexual images while she’s playing the accordion

08/11/2023

The Virtual Self