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From: tsf@THEORY.CS.CMU.EDU (Timothy Freeman)
Newsgroups: alt.individualism
Subject: Re: Individualism - Reality or Myth?
Keywords: myth groups reality
Message-ID: <1081@PT.CS.CMU.EDU>
Date: 9 Mar 88 22:05:59 GMT
References: <779@udccvax1.acs.udel.EDU>
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Organization: Carnegie-Mellon University, CS/RI
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In article <779@udccvax1.acs.udel.EDU> chiefdan@vax1.acs.udel.EDU (Chief Dan Roth) writes:
>However, are we not reducible to a description of oursleves (whether
>functional, material, mental, behavioral, spiritual, or some combination)?
>Each of these characteristic puts us in a group.
>
>Our individual selves are defined by the groups that we belong
>to, not by separating ourselves from these influences.

I suspect this post is just to get an interesting discussion going.  I
can't believe that he really believes this.  Regardless of whether
that is true, here's my response:

The basic question is what a "group" is.

I could assume that a "group" is a set of people.  In that case, if
you know all of the groups that I belong to, you do NOT have a
complete description of me.  In the presence of enough computing
resources and knowledge of physics, a complete description of me would
allow you to know what I would do next.  Listing all of the groups of
which I am a member does not let you know whether I will be inhaling or
exhaling at noon tomorrow, so it is not a complete description of me.

If, instead, I assume that a "group" is a bunch of words describing a
property, and that my membership in the group depends upon whether
that bunch of words fits me, then you do have a complete description
of me, provided that all of the predictions you want to make about me
are expressable in words.  For instance, you could check my membership
in the group "people who will be inhaling at noon tomorrow" and
"people who will be exhaling at noon tomorrow" to determine whether I
will be inhaling or exhaling at noon tomorrow.  

For the purposes of argument I'm assuming here that the mapping from
words to meanings is a thing that exists independently of who is
performing the mapping.  This is actually false because different
people will have different interperetations for the same words.  If I
measured my height this morning as 5'8", does that make me a "tall"
person?  Depends on what the person who is making the decision means
by "tall".

Regardless of what a group is, the general idea that "our individual
selves are defined by the groups which we belong to" has no practical
significance.  You have no guaranteed way to determine which groups I
belong to. Thus when you try to interact with me you should focus your
attention on my behavior, rather than the groups you think I'm a
member of, because you have more accurate information about the former
than the latter.  If you want to deal with people, you had better
treat them as individuals regardless of your philosophies.
-- 
Tim Freeman

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