“Identity and Freedom in Being and Nothingness”
Stephen Wang in Philosophy Now magazine.
This is the part that I clump into the either/or world Self. The empirical, demographic, material facts about us that, while open to dispute, we are either able to demonstrate to others as true or not.
But even here there is room for considerable ambiguity. For example, we can display emotional reactions to events that, say, others then capture on film. The film shows us bring angry or happy or sad. But what if we are only feigning this. What if, for whatever personal reason, we believe it is advantageous for others to think that we are feeling one thing rather than another. Same with the things we say, and the behaviors we choose. How are others able to know if we really mean it?
Thus even with respect to “the facts” about us, in a No God world there are any number of contexts in which “I” can go far below the surface.
I only suggest that this may well be applicable to how we have come to understand our own “I” as well. We think that we are being truthful [to ourselves] about the things we think, feel, say and do. But there are so many variables here [going back to our indoctrination as youths over time historically and across space culturally] that we can only understand and control up to a point.
The supposed solidity of our ego is really just countless layers of existential factors coming at us over the years from any number of convoluted directions.
This part:
I mean, come on, seriously, how many of us have really ever stopped to think this through? To consider the implications of it when faced with choosing behaviors out in the is/ought world. Especially in the modern world where [potentially] we have access to countless moral and political narratives. If only through the internet alone.
Or, perhaps, objectivism is derived precisely from that. Faced with so many conflicting frames of mind “out there” in the world, “I” feels the need to pick one and stick with it.
But: Which particular people, in which particular contexts? And the recognition that in it coming down to these people in these contexts, there were so many other possibilities of things having been different had it been other people in other contexts.
Oh, yeah, almost forgot: all this assuming we have some measure of autonomy of course.