2.

2 Three Assumptions about Human Nature

• Many people in the West believe in life after death. They tend to make some assumptions
about human nature:
1. That humans beings have a self that is conscious and rational.
2. That the self is different from, but related to, the body.
3. That the self endures through time.

The Traditional View of Human Nature

• These three assumptions are part of an influential view of human nature which the
text labels the Traditional Western view of human nature.
• After exploring this viewpoint, we’ll look at three challenges to it:
A. The Darwinian Challenge
B. The Existentialist Challenge
C. The Feminist Challenge

The Rationalistic Version of the Traditional View

• A highly influential version of the Traditional theory of human nature views human nature
rationalistically.
– Both Plato and Aristotle defended versions of this viewpoint, arising from the assumption
that reason is the most distinctive capacity of human beings.
– Neither understood human beings as essentially egoistic or self-interested.

Plato’s Rationalism
• Plato thought that human nature has three parts reason, which pursues knowledge of
immaterial ideals (the Forms) the appetites and the spirited part, or aggressiveness.
• Plato believed these three parts of the soul were harmonized only when controlled by
reason.
– What image does Plato use to illustrate the tripartite soul? (59)

Aristotle’s Rationalism
• Aristotle agreed with Plato that our ability to reason is the characteristic that sets the
human self apart from all other creatures of nature.
– Unlike Plato, however, Aristotle, held that the truth about human nature required only
knowledge of our own world.
– Neither does he share Plato’s emphasis on the soul’s immateriality.
Reason and Purpose
• Aristotle argues that all living things have an end or purpose.
– Fulfilling this purpose allows it to accomplish its good, and leads to the flourishing of the
being.
– The purpose of humans is to use their reason to think and to control desires and
aggressions.
• How does Aristotle argue for the claim that the purpose of humans is to live a life of
reason? (61)
The Judeo-Christian Version of the Traditional View
• Only when the soul is governed by reason will it attain knowledge of the
forms. The soul can do this only if it controls its bodily desires and trains its aggressive
impulses so that both obey reason.
The Judeo-Christian Version of the Traditional View
• The Judeo-Christian religious view claims that humans are made in the image of God, who
has endowed them with rational self-consciousness and an ability to love.
– This belief was not shared by classical Greek philosophers
• However, a large part of the Greek rationalistic view of human nature has been
incorporated into the Judeo- Christian view.

Augustine’s Synthesis
• The Christian philosopher Augustine of Hippo (354–430) incorporated several assumptions
from Plato:
– the human self is a rational self with reason.
– humans have an immaterial and immortal soul.
• Augustine also agreed with the classical rationalistic view, that human nature is not
basically self-interested
– Unlike Plato, however, Augustine emphasized the notion of a will, the ability to choose
between good and evil.

Challenges Arise
• The Traditional Rationalistic View, a synthesis of classical Greek and Judeo- Christian
beliefs and attitudes continues to animate people’s perspectives on human nature.
– However, that view has been increasingly challenged in the modern world.
– One very serious challenge to it has been posed by Darwin’s Theory of Evolution.

The Darwinian Challenge: Three Key Ideas

• Charles Darwin (1809-1882) proposed three important ideas:
1. Natural Variation
2. Struggle for Existence
3. Natural Selection

Disturbing Implications
• The notion that all species, including humans, arose in an evolutionary was a disturbing
new thought for many people.
– Explain how Darwin’s theory undermines two key beliefs in Traditional Rationalism:
• That the ability of reason is a completely different kind of ability than any of the abilities
other animals have.
• That humans are designed for a purpose.

Evidence for Darwin’s theory

• Darwin offered four distinct bodies of evidence in favor of evolution:
1. The existence of similar species (like monkeys and gorillas) with shared common
characteristics.
2. The geographically distribution of species over the face of the earth.
3. The similarity of bone structures, embryonic developments, and useless rudimentary
organs among contemporary living creatures.
4. 4. The fossil record was best explained by his theory that species living today had
descended from different earlier species.
Responses to Darwin
• Some critics argue that the fossil record shows gaps, and thus does not offer clear
evidence in favor of evolution.
• Describe Stephen Jay Gould’s response to this point. (71)
• Other critics have argued for a theistic version of evolution, and that evolution is
consistent with “divine direction.”
• Still other critics contend that the human capacity to reason is unique in all of nature.

The Existentialist Challenge

• Existentialist views denies the Tradition View’s claims that there is a fixed human nature
and that we have a purpose.
– How does Sartre argue for the claim that humans lack an essence, using the example of a
paper-knife?
– Since we lack an essence, Sartre argues, “existence precedes essence.”
• What does Sartre mean by this? (77)

The Existentialist Challenge

• Our consciousness of our freedom to create ourselves, and its accompanying
responsibilities cause what Sartre refers to as “anguish.”
– The most anguishing thought of all is that we alone are totally responsible for ourselves.
– Bad faith is deceiving ourselves by pretending we are not free and so not responsible.
• How does the story of the woman on a date illustrate bad faith? (75-6)

The Feminist Challenge

• Feminists have argued that Rationalist Tradition leaves us with concepts of reason,
appetites, emotions, mind, and body that are all biased in favor of men and against women.
• Explain
• yet the rationalist and Judeo-Christian view is framed in terms of these sexist

Sexist Assumptions
• Feminists argue that the tradition makes several sexist assumptions:
– Reason and rationality are “male,” whereas desire and feeling are “female.”
– Only men are fully human because only men are fully rational, while women are not fully
rational but are driven by their emotions and desires.
– Because reason must rule, men should rule over women.

2.3 The Mind-Body Problem:

How do Mind and Body Relate?
• Whatever your view of human nature, it seems obvious that being human involves having
a mind and a body.
• For philosophers, though, these facts are less than obvious. They wonder:
– How should we best conceive the mind and body?
– How should we understand their relationship?

Dualism
• One philosophical theory of the mind-body relation is called dualism, the view that human
beings are immaterial minds within material bodies
– We’ve already encountered versions of this theory in the philosophies of Plato and Saint
Augustine.
– Perhaps the most famous version of this perspective was developed by Rene Descartes
(1596–1650).
– Descartes argued that the mind and body are two distinct things or substances that
interact with one another.

Dualist Responses to the Problem of Interaction

• From within the standpoint of dualism, the philosopher Gottfried Leibniz (1646–1716)
addressed the question of interaction by arguing that mind and body run in parallel order,
like two clocks that are synchronized so that they seem to be connected yet operate
independently.
– The dualist Nicolas Malebranche (1683–1715) refused to believe that by some incredible
coincidence the mind and body were perfectly synchronized. What happens instead, he
said, is that God steps in to synchronize the body and the mind.

Materialism
• Finding Leibniz and Malebranche’s solutions to problems generated by dualism to be
nonstarters, many philosophers have argued for its rejection, and proposed materialism as
an alternative.
– Materialists argue that since only physical bodies and systems exist, then the activities we
attribute to the mind are really activities of our material body, and we should be able to
explain the operations of the mind in terms of the working of the body.

Reductionism
• Materialists, like Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679), have tended to embrace some form of
reductionism.
– This is the viewpoint that the structure and/or function one kind thing – the mind -- can be
exhaustively explained by he structure and function of another kind of thing – the body.
– If so, then there is no need to postulate the existence of “immaterial substances.” Instead,
we must acknowledge that only material things exist.
– Describe Hobbes’ version of reductionism.

Controversy
• Hobbes’s version of materialism failed to convince many of his contemporaries.
– His reductive explanations of mental activities in terms of physical processes were not
persuasive.
– Many wondered whether reductionism was even possible: How can an even very
complicated physical system, produce mental phenomena that seem to have no physical
characteristics?
– A variety of materialist theories have been proposed to answer this question.

Varieties of materialism
• Identity theory holds that conscious states are identical with the body's brain states.
• Behaviorism says that conscious mental states are bodily behaviors or dispositions.
• Functionalism contends that mental states are functions between perceptual inputs and
behavioral outputs.
– This influential theory has led some philosophers to the view that the human brain is a
kind of computer.
• Eliminative materialism claims says that mental conscious states (desires, beliefs,
intentions) don’t exist, and that future science will let us eliminate all terms referring to
such states

The Computer View of the Human Mind

• Each of the aforementioned theories has been challenged and debated in various ways.
– For example, the functionalist notion that the mind may be part of a computing device led
to the creation of the Turing Test, and eventually to many research programs in Artificial
Intelligence (AI)
– How does John Searle’s “Chinese Rom Argument” challenge the notion that a computer
could have a mind?

The New Dualism

• The difficulties that have plagued materialist views of human nature have prompted some
philosophers to reinvent dualism.
– Unlike Descartes, the new dualists do not hold that there are two kinds of substances—
that is, entities or things—in the universe. Instead, they hold that there are two different
kinds of properties in the universe.
• David Chalmers has argued that consciousness cannot conscious experience involves
properties of an individual that are not entailed by the physical properties of that individual.
• How does Chalmers use the zombie thought experiment to argue for his new dualism?(97

2.4 Is There an Enduring Self?

• Most of us share the belief that we remain the same person—one and the same self—
throughout our lives, even though we may change in many small and many large and
dramatic ways.
• Few of us would claim that we are not the same self that we were ten years ago.
– On the other hand, we also allow that people can lose their selves -- in circumstances in
which people suffer from serious brain disorders, such as Alzheimers – or undergo self-
transformative changes.
– All of this raises questions: Is there an enduring self, and if there is, what is it?

The No-Self View

• Philosophers in the East and West have denied that there is any enduring self.
– For example, Buddhists argue that the, like everything else, the self is nothing more than a
fleeting momentary composite of constantly changing elements: our form and matter, our
sensations, our perceptions, our psychic dispositions, and our conscious thoughts.
• These are never the same from moment to moment and they are together only fleetingly.
What we call the self, then, either considered as the body or considered as the mind, is
utterly transient.

The Atomistic Self

• The cultural emphasis on self-suffiency and independence forms a pattern of attitudes and
assumptions that some philosophers call the atomistic view of the self.
• On this view, the self is, like the atom, selfcontained and independent of other atoms.
– While the things I go through, the people I meet, and the things I witness can touch, move
and even injure me, the real me, the core of my self, can always rise above, remaing
independent of all that it meets.

Recognition
• Hegel argued that my own identity—who I really am—depends on my relationships with
others and that I cannot be who I am apart from my relationships with others:
– “Every self wants to be united with and recognized by another self [as a free being]. Yet at
the same time, each self remains an independent individual and so an alien object to the
other. The life of the self thus becomes a struggle for recognition.” (112)
• Each of us can know that we are free and independent persons only if we see that others
recognize us as free and independent persons.

Search for the Real Self

• The chapter presents us with a dilemma:
– On the one hand, we seem to be independent selves with basic qualities that we are born
with, including, perhaps, the ability to choose freely the path our lives will take.
– On the other hand, our self identity seems to be formed in dialogue and struggle with
others – which implies that we exist relationally, not independently.
– Which are we?