Gavin covers the rest of it, so to talk about the “parts” thing; in this context I’m using it more as a semantic handle on what it means to have internal conflict, and not explicitly as an IFS thing. Psychotherapists have been talking about individuals as being made up of “parts” from the very beginning (Freud’s Id, Ego, Superego) and with all due respect to our mutual CFAR friend, if there’s any other way to describe and interface with the experience of internal conflict as well, I have yet to hear it :)
In other words, I’ve written “a signal from one or more of your parts” as basically equivalent to “a signal that you aren’t fully convinced.” I think the latter is lower-resolution way of saying the former, but could be convinced it’s better if people largely expect the coaching to center around IFS-type things.
As for “shoulds,” I think we can get rid of the way they exist as harmful things without eliminating what you call “moral obligations,” which I agree are good things (and sort of important to the “Altruist” part of Effective Altruism!). Basically I consider the two phrases to be pointing at very different phenomena in general; I think “shoulds” comes from an external source, even if it’s been internalized, while moral obligations are the result of internal generators, and aren’t the sort of thing that would respond to the sorts of questions and interventions that tend to dissolve shoulds.
Gavin covers the rest of it, so to talk about the “parts” thing; in this context I’m using it more as a semantic handle on what it means to have internal conflict, and not explicitly as an IFS thing. Psychotherapists have been talking about individuals as being made up of “parts” from the very beginning (Freud’s Id, Ego, Superego) and with all due respect to our mutual CFAR friend, if there’s any other way to describe and interface with the experience of internal conflict as well, I have yet to hear it :)
In other words, I’ve written “a signal from one or more of your parts” as basically equivalent to “a signal that you aren’t fully convinced.” I think the latter is lower-resolution way of saying the former, but could be convinced it’s better if people largely expect the coaching to center around IFS-type things.
As for “shoulds,” I think we can get rid of the way they exist as harmful things without eliminating what you call “moral obligations,” which I agree are good things (and sort of important to the “Altruist” part of Effective Altruism!). Basically I consider the two phrases to be pointing at very different phenomena in general; I think “shoulds” comes from an external source, even if it’s been internalized, while moral obligations are the result of internal generators, and aren’t the sort of thing that would respond to the sorts of questions and interventions that tend to dissolve shoulds.
The thing about parts not being necessarily about IFS specifically should have occurred to me, thank you!