Chapter 2: You are what you do Key Terms Agent

• 
  Born in 1913, Valence France
  
• 
  went to school at the University of Rennes and studied philosophy
  
  • 
    Completed his studies in Paris
    
  • 
    Graduated in 1935
    
  • 
    Taught in the equivalent to a Canadian High School (Lyceum)
    
• 
  was called to serve his country at the beginning of the Second World War
  
  • 
    Was captured while serving in the french army and put into a camp with other prisoners
    
  • 
    While in the camp he taught philosophy to the other prisoners
    
  • 
    spent the duration of the war in the camp
    
• 
  The war convinced him to become a Pacifist, upon returning to France he decided to join a group of christians striving to model a christian socialist community
  
• 
  Frequently wrote about peace, violence & power, communism, human rights, and politics
  
  • 
    known as The Prolific Writer of more than 1300 books and articles
    
• 
  Became a dean of philosophy at the University of Nantere in Paris
  
  • 
    After an incident with one of the students he decided to resign
    
  • 
    started teaching at multiple universities including Louvian, Montreal, and Chicago
    
• 
  Always a very public man being involved with the great issues of his time
  
• 
  His primary interest has always been human action
  
  • 
    Other main interest is language and how it affects human existence and action
    
• 
  He received the Pope Paul VI International Prize from Pope John Paul II in 2003
  
  • 
    “[Paul Ricoeur is] a philosopher, who is at the same a man of faith, committed to the defence of human and Christian values.” - Pope John Paul II
    

• 
  born in 1856 in Czech Republic, then moved to Vienna when he was four
  
• 
  in 1973, he enrolled to the University of Vienna for medical school, however, he could not study that due to prejudice against Jewish people and decided to study neurology instead
  
• 
  he held that physical disorders such as body paralysis or visual impairment, were rather psychological than physiological causes
  
• 
  became a psychologist
  
• 
  became interested in the work of Joseph Breuer who studied psychotherapy
  
• 
  began to study hypnosis and sexual basis for problems of the human psyche
  
• 
  in order to cure a patient, they must experience a dark world of the human unconscious
  
• 
  began to study self-analysis: focused on dreams- which led to his work of The Interpretation of Dreams
  

• 
  initiated a discussion group on the topic of psychotherapy: other participants were Alfred Adler, Carl Jung, and Otto Frank
  
• 
  these four researchers became known as the four pillars of psychology and formed the Vienna Psychological Society
  
• 
  unfortunately the discussions got heated and in the end, the four went separate ways and created their own theories
  
• 
  Freud continued to study psychotherapy and eventually fled Vienna due to the war
  
• 
  died in 1939
  

• 
  Born in 1889 in Austria, and died in 1951 in England.
  
• 
  Wittgenstein’s primary interests were logic, the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of language.
  
• 
  In the 1920s a group of philosophers known as logical positivists originated the analytic philosophy: a method of approaching philosophical problems through analysis of the terms in which they are expressed.
  
• 
  They claimed that anything with meaning needs some sort of sensory experience to support it.
  
• 
  Physics being the only real science (according to them) set the standard for scientific investigations, in terms of its methods, so analytic philosophy was required to reduce everything back to sensory experiences
  
• 
  These sensory experiences included anything one can see, smell, touch, measure, hear, etc.
  
• 
  Wittgenstein argued that the human will, especially free will,  is not something one decides for himself due to the fact that free will cannot be seen, heard, or touched.
  
• 
  He posed the question, “When ‘I raise my arm,’ my arm goes up. And the problem arises: what is left over if I subtract the fact that my arm goes up from the fact that I raise my arm.”
  
• 
  You can say “I raise my arm” but saying it is not the same as performing the intended action. It is only when you have performed the action that whatever you intended shows itself.
  

As humans, we have the capacity to act. We have the choice to pursue either good acts or bad ones. We all have something called an agent, which is the human capacity to act. The action theory takes effort and awareness to say “ I can do it”. Analytic philosophy is insight that has given into this human capacity to do something. It examines the language we use to communicate a meaningful action. Human actions on the other hand give us our identity. It is the most important building block of who we are and who we become. Freedom is different from human action due to human potential, capacity, and power to act. For every action, there is an agent and it is the heart of ethics. Conceptual framework of action is when you cannot directly observe your capacity to make things happen based on Paul Ricoeur’s theory.  

Your actions shape the person you become; different actions shape you in different ways.  Ethics (moral principles that govern a person’s or group’s behaviour) is about reflecting on your own intended actions. We all have motives behind our actions but we still need to ask ourselves, are my actions moral?

Actions are what makes us human and are what give us our identity. Our identity is created by what we think, say, do, and by what we undergo. Actions are not to be understood because they are not single events standing on their own. Freedom is the human potential, the capacity, the power to act, and action is the realization of that power. Using your freedom to make improvements changes the course of events. The action theory is about who it is done by  not what is done because for every action there is an individual, an agent, performing that action.

You are unable to directly examine your ability to make things happen and are therefore also unable to describe it.  You experience this capacity as a conviction a kind of “i can do this” feeling, but in order to understand human action you must first understand what Paul Ricoeur’s conceptual framework of action.

• 
  An agent is the person that make things happen. They use free choice as both an exercise and a measure of freedom.
  

• 
  Everyone has the capacity to act - actions are the intentions of an individual and everyone is responsible for the actions they perform. They shape who you are as a person.
  

• 
  There are reasons behind every action that humans perform. A reason for an action is an explanation of why that action was carried out.
  

• 
  How an action is carried out affects the agent. The way conflict is dealt with says something about you.
  
• 
  Actions are impacted by the circumstances under which you do something.
  
• 
  When actions are justified by appealing to a motive, approval, or prevention of disapproval, is being sought out. One learns to evaluate their actions by evaluating the actions of others.
  
• 
  Everyone is responsible for their own actions, and the outcome of their actions affects the self for good or bad whether the actions were intended or not.
  

To be free means always having unrealized possibilities because you are not limited to the constraints of others.

The way the human ability to initiate an action is explained varies between philosophers. Wittgenstein states that human will does not exist at all, for it is not a sensory experience. Other philosophers say that human will does not have to be a sensory experience because other factors prove that there are intentions behind your actions (such as those seen in the neural and chemical changes in the brain). These philosophers persist that freedom is nonexistent because as much as we want to think that we have free will, it cannot be scientifically proven. Humans are part of a physical, material universe where nothing in them reaches a spiritual level. Everything is explained through physical and biological processes, and everything has a physical cause (Naturalism).

“It’s all in the genes,” to naturalists, the Genome Project is the “blueprint of humanity.”  The Genome Project shows that humans are pre-programmed organisms that have no spirit or culture but are on an agenda that is the self-replication of genes; the human species are only a mere vehicle to encourage the reproduction of genes.  

No one can deny that there is a connection between genetic coding and human behavior but naturalism cannot account for human freedom or moral drive.  The evidence is coming together for this theory but at the current time it is far from being solidified and convincing.

When someone asks you “who are you?” your natural response is to explain your past and things like family, friends, things you like to do etc.  You are more than any of these things but they provide the framework of your life and help to give people insight into who you are.  You are more than what you’ve done and at any point you’re able to change who you are by doing things like making promises or future commitments.  These things project you into the future and based on the things you plan to do and achieve in the future you are able to change who you are.  Although you can’t change the past you do control your future.  

    Early philosophers had an understanding of human intelligence but did not make the connection between this intelligence and the human brain. René Descartes, a mathematician and philosopher, was the first to make the distinction. He began a systematic exploration of everything he knew and put them to the test. There he realized that he can doubt everything, including physical substances because appearances are deceiving. His conclusion stated: I think, therefore I am. He created a split between matter and thinking, and was left with a thinking mind with no link the brain.

    In the 19th century further progress was made in understanding the physiology of the brain and how it works. This helped to understand human behaviour. Thomas Huxley argued that the brain was a machine, as is everything else in nature, and the mind is a reflection of the brain’s activity.

    Even though we now have a better understanding of the brain, modern science has still not shown a definitive connection between the mind and brain function, even though it is evident that there is a connection. For example, the development of children is linked to the development of the brain.

    St. Augustine, a theologian, connected free will with grace. In his time, some denied the free will and some gave the free will too much power. St. Augustine stated: “It is certain that we will when we will; but He [God] brings it about that we act, but that without His help we neither will anything good nor do it.”

    Social determinism is like naturalism. Your behaviour is determined by the influence of others upon you instead of your physical state. Your actions can be explained by what others have put you through which is why you are unable to be free. Your behaviour is explained by social factors, not your own decisions. To a social determinist, your past determined who you are today. This concept is based on the work of Sigmund Freud and his theory of the unconscious and conscious mind. The unconscious mind works according to you’re negative thoughts - it responds as a devil-figure.

    Discovering the  concept of the unconscious mind was one of Freud’s most important contributions to the understanding of the human person. He stated that human behaviour is driven by unconscious impulses based on memories and desires most likely repressed because they were too painful. Therefore, the conscious mind will not have to deal with it directly. These memories do not go away, therefore there is a constant pressure on your conscious mind which plays an indirect role in shaping your perceptions and decisions. When you act out of your unconscious, your behaviour patterns are what Freud would call, “neurotic” In other words, for Freud, your dreams and neurotic behaviour patterns are resurfacing memories and desires. This becomes deterministic. Unless you reconnect with the repression and what gave rise to it, then your actions are not free and you cannot be responsible for them.