I believe that Sherman’s account of
self-hope, while consistent with the rest of her reasoning, is ultimately
incorrect. It is very important for her argument here that she specifies hope in oneself, as opposed to hope for oneself, with the former being described
as “self-hope.” The self in her conception is definitely that of an agent.
Sherman tries to argue that because we can morally address ourselves, vesting
hope in the self must be possible, as hope is a form of moral address like
resentment or gratitude. It is normal, she writes, for us to react to ourselves
with moral attitudes such as compassion or shame, and hope is included in that
list of attitudes.
Sherman seems to fall into a
semantic trap here. She moves forward with an argument that is logically
consistent with the rest of her thesis, but I think is contradictory to the
term “hope” in natural language. When we use the word hope to describe a feeling,
it is more than just a desire (as Sherman points out). There is a certain
animus present – we are inspired to act in a way that might manifest our hopes.
But there is also an element of lacking control. We don’t typically describe
someone as hopeful for a certain outcome when we know that person is in control
of all variables. We experience hope because there are things outside of our control. We will work
towards the things we hope for, but it strikes me as improper to describe
someone as hopeful for an outcome when they know
what the outcome will be already. It makes sense to put hope in things and people, because they exist
beyond our control, no matter how hard we work. Placing hope in oneself would
therefore imply a lack of control over the self, and I think that is at least
partially contradictory to a notion of the self as a free agent. I think that she could make a more compelling, detailed argument, but what she presents here seems incomplete.
I think her argument can be salvaged from this criticism. She might have addressed it, and if she did I can't recall a specific point.
ReplyDeleteThe condition of hope is one that is essentially irrational. The most "rational" attitude, would be a statistical one... if 99 percent of cases similar to yours fail, you should expect to fail, and hope does not enter into the equation.
But what hope does to a person is they narrow their attention to the 1% of successful cases. Take Dan's story in the Sherman piece; the majority of people in his position never learn to walk again, but Dan concentrated on one case of another success, ignored all the failing cases, and went on about his project.
Dan most certainty was not in total control of his condition and his odds were low, but the one in a million example--of the successful amputee-to-marathon runner--was an enabler of his "self-hope", and in a sense "animated" him to take actions beneficial to his dream of walking again.
I think that something along these lines could allow Sherman to use hope in the manner she wants to. Hope is an emotional condition that one can invest in oneself against the odds... provided they have the right stimulus such as an allegory or "success story" to enable that hope. Even though hope is irrational in this sense, it is a useful emotion at times.
Ethan, I think you pose a really interesting and relevant point. However, your argument relies on the idea that “placing hope in oneself would imply a lack of control over the self, and that is at least partially contradictory to a notion of the self as a free agent.” Though I would agree in a majority of cases that hope in oneself is misplaced normative or nonnormative hope, I still feel that there are parts of the self that cannot necessarily be completely controlled.
ReplyDeleteThere have been heroic cases when people have surprised even themselves with their actions. For example, a mother and her son got into a car accident, and she is able to escape from the wreck with few injuries. However, her son is trapped under the weight of the car. She hopes in herself that she has the physical strength to lift the car off of her child. You could argue that she hopes the car is light enough for her to lift, but under normal circumstances, most people cannot lift a car and it would unrealistic to hope for such a feat. However, in this situation, she has the hope that she can lift the car to save her child, even though she really has no inclination as to whether or not she actually will. She has never been tested in lifting a car before.
I know that is a physical example, and maybe it does not align directly with more agent-driven scenarios, but I also think this situation is applicable to other moral situations. There are factors such as societal pressures, specifically constructs of beauty to use an example that affect peoples’ subconscious thought. Many young girls may grow up believing that the quintessential woman figure is a Barbie or supermodels. That is something that they cannot necessarily control. So they grow up discriminating against others or themselves for not living up to that ideal. If I were one of those girls, I could hope in myself that I would be able to overcome societal standards and form my own concept of beauty. I do not know if I could, but I would try.
One final point is that the only way you could possibly know for absolute sure how you would react in a situation is if you were in that exact situation before, which is impossible. I think there is a certain level of uncertainty in our agent, and that self-hope is indeed possible and valid.
If I read your argument correctly, I believe the point you are trying to make is that we cannot have hope in ourselves because:
ReplyDelete1. We are in control of ourselves (whether completely or for the most part) and having hope in ourselves requires that we are not able to change our own outcomes, and
2. It is contradictory to say that we can have hope in ourselves because we are free agents, so we have control over our outcomes (similar to, if not the same as, what free will is all about)
Although your statement is not exactly incorrect, since I think the idea of free will is highly subjective in nature and is therefore hard to argue whether or not it "exists", I believe that our self-awareness and our self-controlling tendencies are not independent within ourselves. Distractions, or attacks on our attentive abilities to keep ourselves the same over time, are part of the reasons why we cannot constantly keep ourselves in check and manage our personalities continually over time. We as human beings are imperfect creatures and cannot stay the same as we were years ago.
Along with distractions, we're not the only things influencing our own behaviors. The environment and its many constantly active stimuli never fail to add themselves and their additive qualities to our personalities. This all means that we can still have hope in ourselves since us at the present are not going to be the same as us in the future (or in the past). We are ever-changing people, just as everything around us that lives changes.
Therefore, we are not in control of how we change over time, so we can still have hope in ourselves because not only do we not have the ability to actively change our outcomes in the future, but even if we try to, we will lose the attention to after some time due to stimuli in our environment constantly grabbing our attention and putting it elsewhere.