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Monday, May 27, 2019

Determination and Control


We are all manipulated by social media like Facebook, Instagram, Tumblr and Pinterest and searching engines like Google. Everybody knows or can know. Much has been said about it already and as a result these media etc. promise to better their lives. Maybe they’ll do, or maybe they only say that they’ll do, but do we really care about it? Perhaps we should think like Burrhus Skinner, who asked in his book Beyond Freedom and Dignity why we should worry about being covertly controlled and manipulated if it makes us happy. Your first reaction may be that he is right and it is my first thought, too. However, on second thoughts, I don’t feel at ease with the idea of being manipulated, even if I don’t know it and even if I shall never know that it happens and shall not have the slightest suspicion that it happens. Why?
Actually there is nothing special about being limited by external causes and influences in what we do. You have broken a leg and cannot walk for a long time. You have even to stay in hospital at first. A bridge has collapsed and we must make a detour. There is a power failure and the fridge, the Internet and a lot more don’t work for hours. So, why shouldn’t we adapt to the manipulation by the social media just as we must in these cases? It sounds reasonable. Life is that way. Is it?
Take the case of the bridge, but the same could be said about the other cases. The bridge has been built according to the newest insights and has been well maintained, but it has been destroyed by an earthquake. It’s a mere natural disaster. We are sad that it happened, but it happened. But what if the bridge would have been blown up by terrorists? Then we are not sad but angry. Apparently there is a difference between natural limitations and human limitations. Even more, we may find the latter objectionable, while we’ll never use such a word for natural causes.
Once we see this, we are close to the solution of our problem. For “objectionable” has everything to do with objectives, so with purposes. We cannot find what nature does objectionable. Nature doesn’t have purposes but in nature everything just happens, and that’s it. The word “objectionable” can be applied only to human agents, namely to what they do and to the effects of what they do. As Robert Kane says in his book The Significance of Free Will: “Objectionable control is exercised by purposeful agents, not natural forces.” And, referring to Daniel Dennett, he continues: “For, while nature may determine us, nature (‘not being an agent’) does not control us.” (p.69). So, while both nature and the purposeful agent constraint us and limit us in what we can do, nature has no interests in doing so and doesn’t act intentionally. The purposeful agent, however, does have interests, like earning money in the case of the owners of the social media. In view of these interests the purposeful agent sets his aims and tries to manipulate and so constraint our behaviour intentionally. By doing so this agent impedes the wills of the persons who are his objects. That’s why we don’t simply say that the agent determines what we do but that he controls what we do. In this way he limits our freedom, even in case we don’t know he does. But why should we follow the will of the other? Freedom is “the power to be the ultimate source or origin of one’s own ends or purposes rather than have that source be in something other than you.” (id., p.70) In short, freedom is being yourself. That’s what you give up, if you allow yourself being controlled by social media like Facebook, Instagram, Tumblr, Pinterest, and searching engines like Google, and so on. But maybe you are happy with it.

Source
Robert Kane, The Significance of Free Will. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998; pp.67-71.

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