Yes, it’s rather Freudian looked at that way, in this case, the conscious moral agent, the ego, is charged with denying the lower drives of the id, and being beholden to the moral standards of the super-ego.Advocate wrote: ↑Sat Mar 27, 2021 11:29 pmFrom the outside we are one person to everyone else, but from the inside there is a constant tension between subconscious and conscious desires. What do you want v. What do you want to want? The bits that are the way you want to be, that you claim for yourself, are "the real you".Dimebag wrote: ↑Sat Mar 27, 2021 11:09 pm My question is, if the feeling of volition was just that, a feeling, could we tell the difference between true deliberate action and appropriated volition all “feeling”?
Another question. When a person KNOWS they shouldn’t do something, but due to temptation and LACK of willpower, they give in to desire and do it anyway despite negative consequences, why do we treat them as if they made a free choice?
Is it because we truly believe they chose freely, or because we don’t want them doing such behaviours due to consequences towards others?
Put another way, do we punish as a preventative and warning to others, or because we truly believe the person deserves it?
What’s weird is, a person who does something wrong, would likely admit they had no choice or felt compelled, but THEY chose to do it.
It’s like your job as the agent, is to hold back the inner demons that would sabotage us, and those who are strongest are deemed morally right, while the weaker are judged.
The id is short term desire and lower impulse, the super-ego is learned social rules and long term interest. The ego must use “willpower” or rather “won’t-power” to withstand the impulses of the id and allow the higher standards of the super-ego to drive behaviour.
By withholding the id’s desires, the ego will at some stage hopefully be rewarded by the promises of the super-ego. It is of course still some kind of cost benefit analysis. No doubt the balancing of this equation might be driven in some way by energy conservation. If the withholding of desire for the short term is deemed to pay off much more in the longer term, the bargain is made, the lower drives suppressed.