Did they choose to do that? If they didn’t choose to act bravely, would they be cowards?
Concepts like bravery or cowardice do not belong to animals. It is exactly because animals do things without being conscious of any such-like significance, whereas we do, that delineates us from the animals. An animal is only “brave” or “cowardly” in reference and analogously
to man, who establishes or recognizes the criteria for the virtue of “braveness,” or its absence even to the point of its opposite vice, “cowardice.”
It is, moreover, not incongruant with a survival instinct for an animal to risk itself for its “master”: master, for many animals, is also my source of food; whereas, human beings will risk their lives even to save animals, even when the existence or non-existence of that animal is completely irrelevant to my own survival.
Furthermore, it would be absurd to claim that a human risking himself to save an animal is the result of natural instinct: man can act on reason devoid of or even, most conspicously, in spite of instinct or emotion, which reasoning we can judge either to be good or bad, correct or faulty. Consequently we have concepts or categories like bravery or virtue that go beyond any comparison in a simple animal.
I swear to you man. If you were him, you would do what he did.
Yes, but if the poster were
actually Maxilimian, then the poster’s identity and personal free will would no longer exist; and this is no wonder at all that, consequently, Maximilian’s decisions ended up being the same: because there was no change in the first place, since the poster would actually
be Maximilian.
On the other hand, if the poster were to (as it were) somehow “supplant” or replace (or possess) Maximilian, then whatever peculiar characteristics of the poster that constituted
his unique identity would replace those counterparts of Maximilian. In this situation, it would be wrong to identify the possessed Maximilian as Maximilian: he would, in fact, be a different person. Denying this would mean that we shouldn’t just refuse to attribute actions or decisions to individuals, but moreover we should even refuse to name or identify them, since a person is by no means unique since, according to your theory, any person would do what any other does or has done: Ghandi would have invaded Iraq had he somehow been George W. Bush, and Mother Theressa would have made a killing and put all other things aside had she been Donald Trump.
In sum, it would become absurd to (i) attribute actions to individuals and (ii) to identify individuals at all, since all individuals are by no means in this theory actually unique or even different, except at best accidentally (i.e., superficially), but are in fact each of them the result of a blind force that compels them absolutely to make certain decisions or not.
Furthermore, your swearing to this cannot and does not alter anything; unless, of course, you want us to believe that you have actually enjoyed the unique privilege of “supplanting” Maximilian, yet notwithstanding found yourself utterly incapable of making any different decisions or choices than what Maximilian actually made: in which case, you must have felt rather more like a mere passenger than actually like Maximilian, because Maximilian certainly did not feel (anymore than we do) absolutely bound to do certain things. In which case your theory would be proven wrong, because unlike now, you felt differently: now you at least feel like you can make a choice, but if you supplanted Maximilian, you wouldn’t even feel that, unless you are also going to argue that our entire experience of any sensation is itself also a gigantic illusion: e.g., of fear or compassion or any other affection whatsoever that influence, or can influence, our decisions.
