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Full Idea
Control is the ultimate criterion of the self: I am the sum total of the parts I control directly.
Gist of Idea
I am the sum total of what I directly control
Source
Daniel C. Dennett (Elbow Room: varieties of free will [1984], §4.2)
Book Ref
Dennett,Daniel C.: 'Elbow Room - Free will worth wanting' [MIT 1999], p.82
A Reaction
This looks awfully like a flagrant self-contradiction, and I think it is. It seems pretty obvious that there is at least a distinction between the bit or bits that do the controlling, and the bits that get controlled.
| 3791 | Awareness of thought is a step beyond awareness of the world [Dennett] |
| 3794 | Foreknowledge permits control [Dennett] |
| 3795 | Causal theories require the "right" sort of link (usually unspecified) [Dennett] |
| 3796 | The active self is a fiction created because we are ignorant of our motivations [Dennett] |
| 3798 | An overexamined life is as bad as an unexamined one [Dennett] |
| 3797 | I am the sum total of what I directly control [Dennett] |
| 3800 | You can be free even though force would have prevented you doing otherwise [Dennett, by PG] |
| 3801 | Rationality requires the assumption that things are either for better or worse [Dennett] |
| 3802 | Why pronounce impossible what you cannot imagine? [Dennett] |
| 3803 | Can we conceive of a being with a will freer than our own? [Dennett] |