Monday, April 21, 2014
Nominalism
For my philosophy class, we recently read an article called "Making Up People" by Ian Hacking. The entirety of the article was based around the idea that societal definitions and distinctions are self-fulfilling processes - after the definitions/distinctions are created, people act according to their definition (whether purposefully or not). Hacking says that "our spheres of possibility, and hence our selves, are to some extent made up by our naming and what that entails." He is saying that we manipulate ourselves and others through nomenclature and definitions. I don't personally have a strong opinion on the matter, but it's an interesting question: do we create and then define, or do we simply choose one of many predetermined roles? Or is it a combination of the two? And what implications does this have on the free will question?
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I think this is a really interesting idea because as soon as we label something, we seem confined to that label. This connects to what Casey's personality test for lacrosse today. She felt that the test labelled her in some correct ways, but it also made her feel like she was tied to that label on the lacrosse field. In this example, the label probably reinforced what Casey already knew about herself, which can be empowering and encouraging. However, she discussed how the label also made her feel tied down and unable to escape its confines.
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