Unit 2

WHY DOES YOUR VIEW OF HUMAN NATURE MATTER?

Unit 2

What is Human Nature?

Is human nature essentially selfish?Freud, Hobbes, Schlick – people are

essentially selfish.Psychological egoism – we can’t do any acts

other than the ones that we most want to do.

What is Human Nature?

Is there life after death? Please see quote on page 52.

Some assumptions:We all have a self – we are physical bodies

that are conscious and rational. Does the self have a purpose? Is the self related to, but different, from the

physical body?

The Traditional Rationalistic View

Reason is Humanity’s Highest PowerThree defining elements of human nature:

Reason, Appetite, Spirit – PlatoForms: Plato’s believes the forms are perfect and

eternal.Aristotle believed we can know about human

nature if we had knowledge about our own world. For Aristotle, as Plato, the use of reason is the

purpose of human nature.What are some risks of this view?

Judeo-Christian View of Human Nature

According to this view humans are made in the image of God. The ability to love is the characteristic of a human being. All humans are capable of this ability regardless of their level of rationality.

Loving, as well as serving, God is of upmost importance.

St. Augustine emphasized the nature of the will. We have the ability to choose between good or evil.

Judeo-Christian View of Human Nature

What are some potentially negative implications of this view?

The Darwinian Challenge

Darwin:Animals and plants are sometimes born by

chance with features that are different from those of their parents that they can pass on to their offspring.

Certain traits are sometimes passed down, which can lead to animals gradually change into new species. These laws work the same for humans, hence humans may have evolved.

What are some objections to this theory?

The Existential Challenge

Existentialism is the view that we have no predetermined essence. For Jean-Paul Sartre, humans are condemned to be free.

An authentic human being cannot depend upon God or society to justify their actions. They are condemned to be free and to make their own decisions. They are responsible for their own decisions. The realization that we have so much freedom causes anguish. “We are terrified to have such complete freedom. When we claim that something external to us is the cause of what we are we act in “bad faith”, which occurs when we pretend that we are not free.”  Why is this a challenge to traditional views of human

nature?

The Feminist Challenge

Why do you think feminists might challenge human nature? What types of stereotypes have developed regarding so-called “women’s nature”?

Plato believed that reason should rule over the passions, emotions, appetites.

Aristotle claimed that women do not share fully in reason.

Augustine argued that women are subordinate to men.

Is the feminist critique correct? Is the traditional rationalist view sexist?

Responses

One response might be to claim that women are just as rational as men.

 Another might be to reject the view that

reason is superior. Ethics of care.

The Mind-Body Problem

How Do Mind and Body Relate? Are the mind and the body two distinct things? If so, how can a non-physical object interact with a physical one? What is consciousness? Does it come and go depending on

whether or not I am asleep? Consciousness is individual. It has no shape, color, weight and so forth.

The Dualist View of Human Nature- Rene Descartes argued that the mind and body are two distinct things. See page 76. If humans are made up of two substances, then how an immaterial mind impact a physical body, and how can a physical body affect our mind? Descartes argued that they were able to interact through the pineal gland. Leibniz believed that the mind and body don’t really interact at all, but only appear to (clock analogy). while Malebranche believed that God synchronized the two.

The Materialist View

Hobbes argued that Dualism is wrong. There is only one substance: the material body. The operations of the mind are dependent upon the physical body. The mind is just what we call the physical or chemical processes in the physical body. This is often called reductionism. It is the idea that we can look at the same thing in two different ways, i.e. the color of red.

How can a physical system, even a very complicated system, produce mental phenomena that seem to have no physical characteristics?

Mind-Body Identity

J.J.C. Smart argues that states of consciousness are identical with states of the brain. However, brain states are publically observable, but mental states are not. Moreover, a mental experience has no location, no color, and no shape. So, how can brain states and conscious states be the same, since they are such very different things?

The Behaviorist View

Gilbert Ryle held that mental activities could be explained in terms of the activities that they are associated with.

What is Putnam’s objection to this theory?

The Functionalist View

This view holds that we can explain mental activities and mental states in terms of perceptual inputs and behavioral outputs. Is this true?

The Computer View

Turing vs. Searle

Eliminative Materialism

We should just do away with our notion of consciousness.

What do you think about this view?

New Dualism

New dualists hold not that there are two different kinds of substances in the universe, but that there are two different kinds of properties. These dualists hold that consciousness is not a physical feature of the world, but a nonmaterial property of it.

Is there an enduring self?

Do we stay the same over time? Sometimes people say we have changed, what do they

mean? Have we really changed or are we the same person?If brains were transplanted between people,

wouldn’t we want to say that the brain, and not the body, carried the self?

Descartes believed we are the same because we have the same mind throughout time. Do we? If not, then are we a different person?

John Locke argued that memory is what makes us have an enduring self.

The No Self View

Buddhism and Hume

What do you think of these views?

?Are we independent and self-sufficient individuals

The Atomistic Self – Kant, DescartesThe Relational Self – Taylor, Hegel