What is power? What does it mean to hold power over others?

What is power? What does it mean to hold power over others?

This is pretty vague.

power is forcing people to do actions against their own self interest

You are able to coerce them into doing something they otherwise wouldn't have done

to torture (as in, punish)

When tweens imitate a famous celebrity, the celebrity is (often knowingly) manipulating their behaviours, but is this forced and against the children's self interest. Certainly the celebrity wields influence and so some form of control over the children, are you arguing that power has no relation to the ability to manipulate and control others?

To command physical force in some way that means people will act in your interests
This could be in the obvious sense of enslaving or taxing subjects, but it could as much be someone who's property is protected by the law and the force that backs it offering you payment to work on his property.

So women have the most power in the world. I mean I already knew this but thanks anyway.

Power is paying someone for cutting down a tree with thin strips made from the previous tree cut down by the guy you forced to do it under threat of death, then taking a portion of the thin tree strips each year to pay others to create goods that can be bought for thin tree strips.

What if a policeman overpowers another who is trying to kill himself? he is exercising power over another in the self-interest of the suicidal. Unless you think all people are always rational and, given a choice, will always act in their self-interest.

Self interest can be pursuing abstract goals unrelated to self preservation.

how are the suicidal pursing their own self-interest?

By being interested in not living.

so by your thinking everything that a person does is always in their self interest because you assume that every action is always self-interested?

Yes. You comply with someone forcing you into an action only because of your interest in not facing their threat. This is also why it's impossible to negotiate with someone that holds no interest in what you offer, and you end up with suicide bombers.

Well I disagree that a persons actions are always a product of self-interest. People like smoking but it is clearly not in their best interest, people enjoy many things that are a disaster for them in the long-run. The often guilty pursuit of immediate gratification is surely not the same as self-interest.

A woman who is in an abuse relationship but refuses to leave, or a kidnapped child with Stockholm syndrome should not be abandoned to their abusers because they happen to desire their abuse, in the moment. It is often necessary for governments to coerce people using power to align people's actions with their self-interests.

So I disagree that power is always about forcing people to act against their self-interest.

>People like smoking but it is clearly not in their best interest, people enjoy many things that are a disaster for them in the long-run.
The argument is not about future interest, but whether taking an action in the moment is out of self interest. Immediate gratification is the epitome of self interest.

>A woman who is in an abuse relationship but refuses to leave, or a kidnapped child with Stockholm syndrome should not be abandoned to their abusers because they happen to desire their abuse, in the moment. It is often necessary for governments to coerce people using power to align people's actions with their self-interests.
Those that intervene in such situation are following their self interest, for example the desire to enforce a specific form of a some societal construct.

>So I disagree that power is always about forcing people to act against their self-interest.
It's not about agreement, any action you take is because you chose to take it. Whether the threat under which you took said action justifies this in the eyes of those able to enforce their interest upon you is a completely different topic called morality.

>any action you take is because you chose to take it
but this tautology has nothing to do with your proposition that all actions are necessarily self-interested. You use this circularly so that when I ask why this particular action is self interested you answer that the action is self interested because actions are self-interested. I don't actually share your axiom, since I can't infer that because people carry out actions. all of their actions are motivated by self-interest. You just seem to assume it.

Power is the ability to accomplish your volition.
I think a broader definition works best for such a ample term.

That can be using force or influence to make people do what they otherwise wouldn't, like some people here said, but obviously it's also applicable to any kind of obstacle to making your will happen.

Some people might also define power in conjunction with freedom, the later being the prerrogative, the power, to accomplish your desire, which I think is not far fetched.

Not him, but I also belive all action is self-interested.
The thing is that the human being is, by nature, finalistic (I think that's the term in english), therefore his actions are always determined by his foresight of their outcome.

Needless to say, our actions are limited by our ability to foresee said outcomes, so the only way to act contrary to your own desires is to act out of a misstake in that prediction.
To put it simply, it's to make a mistake or act out of ignorance.

>self interest
swing and a miss

Power is the ability to have people do what you want them to do. Force (including threats and coercion) is what you use when you run out of power.

This nigga gets it.

The problem with this "all actions are selfish" meme is that if you imagine someone doing something they don't want to do (which happens all the time) then say "well that doesn't count because if they really didn't want to cut off their own hand, or whatever, then they wouldn't have" then you've logically disallowed the possibility of labeling anything unwanted. Anything that slips through and is performed as an action is suddenly labeled selfish - and anything that was unwanted and didn't happen is maybe hypothetically unselfish. This is another way of saying all actions that happened happened. An inane circular statement.

It's like saying every word spoken is a lie after you deny the possibility of labeling any statement true. If nothing is true then everything must be a lie, and if everything is a lie then it must be obvious that all words are lies since you can simply look around and see nothing but lies. QED

The point you're missing is the fact that there's an imediate action that is always wanted (otherwise you wouldn't have commited the act) and a mediate result that you presumably want to achieve with that action.

Imagine you want to kill a person, but you end up missing the shot because you're a moron with firearms.
You'd argue that action wasn't wanted, but in reality the action of pulling the trigger was wanted, only the RESULT was not.

If you're literaly crazy, ignorant, incompetent, just plain unlucky or maybe you have some spastic disorder, the desired outcome that governs your action and the act itself might differ, something or someone might "foil your plans", so to speak.
But when people claim that "all action is selfish and wanted" they're refering to the imediate action, not the desired result.

Admitedly, it would seem a pointless proposition at first glance, but it's very relevant if you acknowledge the distinction between action and desired outcome.

>it's to make a mistake or act out of ignorance.
What about dependent drug users who know their behavior is harmful and self destructive and yet choose (since "addiction" is not the stripping of human will) to take drugs? Many people know their actions are harmful and against their long term self-interest and pursue self destructive passions knowingly anyway.

Also "finalism" or it seems, consequentialism in your eyes is the nature of man. We do consider outcomes but we also act out of duty against our immediate passions. If we have the moral question: "should I pick up this discarded can off the street" you might as a finalistic self-interested individual, decide to avoid the dis-utility of picking up the can and putting it in the trash, and so walk on by. But the problem with this "outcome" thinking is: what if you were the one who threw the can on the floor in the first place? the answer to the moral question changes, since you have a duty to pick up the can. The eternal-anglo consequentialists don't ever consider context of a moral question. Actions are not then simply determined by expectation of future outcome, but also by prior duties and obligations. If you want to say "but muh utility gained from acting dutiful" you are back to circularity. Your post also still assumes that all actions are necessarily self interested.

Consequentialist moral judgements are intractable. We can only ever consider a tiny fraction of the possible future outcomes of our actions, and so by your own definition, no-one acts self-interestedly. Since also, all predictions are tentative and imperfect, and there can be no point of hindsight as the outcomes continue to develop causally. I think people do act out of self-interest, but it can't be said that they only act out of self interest. So the definition of the other user wrt power, that is always acting against self interest simply cannot be accepted as true.

The capacity to project your will.

It should be noted that the threat of violence is the basis of authority, so for all intends and purposes personal power draws its legitimacy from threat of violence.

while clearly true that not all actions are intended, the argument, that the existence of actions does not imply all actions are self-interested, can be simply moved back a conceptual step. The existence of intents does not imply that all intents are self-interested. What if a man intends to self-harm, or act in a good way.

Where you are tripping yourself up here is that often people intend to act selflessly and with principle, but then by some weakness of will, act in a way that is selfish. That there are times where we act selfishly against our principled intents. Some people intend to commit some robbery, but some pang of civic duty restrains them, so that they do not act self-interestedly. SO you are undermining your own argument that all actions are necessarily self interested.

Now you are asserting that all intents are selfish, which is again simply an assertion that you have provided another circular argument for.

Power is when other people obey you for whatever reason. Every person that obeys you increases power by another unit.
So we have:

P=O^n

where
P equals Power
O equals an obeying subject
n equals number of obeying subject

>an obeying subject
>an
So power = 1^(number of subjects)? One raised to any power is still just one.

Or is having 100 followers equal to 100^100 powers? Then you should just write it as P=n^n. Your numbers will get out of hand very quickly that way, though.

If you're a drug dependent, it's a question of imediate gratification "sweetening the deal" when it comes to making a decision.

You don't even have to be a literal addict. People often strugle to avoid the imediate gratification of things as simple as a tasty, but caloric meal at the expense of their long term health, for example.
Still, they make a decision based on the perceived pros and cons at that time.

Even a self-destructive goal must offer some sort of perceived desirable outcome otherwise people would not do it, unless they're unaware of the harms.
At that point the imediate action is still intentional, but a missreading of other important factor leads you to do something you might end up regreting later. That doesn't change the fact that you did it at your own volition at the time, though.

As far as moral is concerned, surely you'd agree that moral has some sort of utility that justifies its existence, even if it's presented in the dogmatic, irrational form of a moral rule, right? Or at least a -perceived- utility that might very well go aganist your desire entirely.

If you feel moraly compeled to pick up the can, you do it because you think that'll provide a desirable outcome by helping the environment, by reingorcing your belief in the societal contract or even by allowing you to showoff to other people.
You weight that desirable outcome and the hasle or embarassment of picking it up and make a decision in the interest of accomplishing whatever seems more advantageous to you.
Moral is just another desirable goal for you to consider.

>We can only ever consider a tiny fraction of the possible future outcomes of our actions

True. That's why only the IMEDIATE ACTION is necessarily intentional. When you take into account that sometimes an unpredictable or unpredicted factor influences the outcome unfavorably, you might be tempted to label that action as "undesired", but that only becomes aparent after the fact.

We are getting somewhere.
I'm guessing its exponential somehow. An army is much more than just the sum of its soldiers. Cities too.

P=O^n

Maybe O is the power a single adult human can deliver.

I think the point of contest here surrounds the definition of "self" in the self-centered or self-interested discussion.

What I'm trying to say is even if you act "selflessly", you choose to do it, so that must necessarily be your wish to do so.

It doesn't really matter why you do it. Maybe you like the warm and fuzzy feeling of giving money to charity, or maybe you think you're making a difference going out of your way to pick that can off the floor because a clean city is more pleasant to live in.
In any case, you do it because you perceive a desirable outcome, and that outcome is considered desirable by YOU.

If you sucumb to the temptation and end up acting aganist your principle or moral belief, whatever that principle/moral might be, it doesn't matter either.
That just means that at that time it seemed more advantageous to act aganist the principle. That or you missread the factors influential to the outcome, but I'm getting tired of making this caveat at this point.

It's not a circular argument. It's a non-argument that only becomes relevant when you take the goal into account, in which case other factors (unknown or uncontrollable) could potentialy "throw a wrench in the cogs".

>What if a man intends to self-harm, or act in a good way.
You're confusing self preservation with self interest. The society you live in has ingrained in you the concept of "everyone's self interest", which in itself is an impossible construct - it assumes everyone has the same will for their well being, when in fact self interest is not about well being but rather will actuation.