system
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human
Are human beings individuals or "dividuals"? What consequences does this have?

In his book _Homo Deus_, Israeli historial Yuval Noah Harari describes the ideology  (or "religion") of _liberal humanism_ as the idea that individual humans and their freedoms are the most important things in the world. Harari then argues that science has shown that human beings are not "individuals" in the sense of some atomic whole. He argues that humans (or human minds) should rather be thought of as "dividuals" - i.e., a human mind is composed of multiple parts, often conflicting, and the "self" is nothing more than a _story_ that we use to make sense of the world.

Harari argues that we should therefore reject the notion of free will because there is no "self" whom we can reasonably credit with making free choices - rather, the components that comprise a human mind have been proven to be highly manipulable.

Now, Harari is more of a historian than a philosopher, and many will probably find his philosophy to be thin cup of tea. But I think he asks an extremely interesting question, and I am sure that more accomplished philosophers have pondered it: Is it better to think of humans as "dividuals"? What are the arguments for and against this? And even more importantly, if we do reject the "self" as being a mere abstraction, _what consequences follow from this_? 

Thanks in advance!
gpt
>Harari then argues that science has shown that human beings are not "individuals" in the sense of some atomic whole. He argues that humans (or human minds) should rather be thought of as "dividuals" - i.e., a human mind is composed of multiple parts, often conflicting, and the "self" is nothing more than a story that we use to make sense of the world. 

I think the story is a lot more complicated than this. The idea that human minds are not atomic wholes has been prevelant at least since Nietzsche (and tbh we could probably trace it back to the ancients), but became standardised by Freud. Even biologically we are composed of lots of different parts, but all the parts exist together in an integrated system. In fact, we could go as far as saying that the individual is precisely the relational process the connects the disparate elements of a being together. 

Now what that means for free will is a whole different matter, but it's a question that philosophers like Alfred North Whitehead, Gilbert Simondon, and Gilles Deleuze have written about a lot. Simondon's whole thesis is based on the idea of individuation as a process, whereas Deleuze, who was influenced a lot by Simondon, talks specifically about 'dividuals'. Might be worth looking into those guys if you want a more detailed answer.