PHILOSOPHY
A Text with Readings
ELEVENTH EDITION
MANUEL VELASQUEZ
CHAPTER TWO: HUMAN NATURE
PHILOSOPHY
• Human nature refers to what it means to
be a member of our species, what makes
us different from anything else. Some
important issues raised by our views of
human nature are questions concerning
whether humans have a spiritual aspect or
are purely material and whether humans
are aggressive and self-interested or
cooperative and benevolent.
CHAPTER TWO: HUMAN NATURE
PHILOSOPHY
• Traditional Western views of human
nature assume that all humans have the
same human nature: They are conscious,
rational selves who have a purpose. Some
Traditional views refer to this immaterially
defined self as the "soul".
CHAPTER TWO: HUMAN NATURE
PHILOSOPHY
• One important version of the Traditional Western
view of human nature is the ancient Greek view
that sees humans as uniquely rational beings
with a purpose. This view contends that reason
can and should rule over human desire and
aggressiveness.
• 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.
• In the Christian version, the self is immaterial
and distinct from the body.
CHAPTER TWO: HUMAN NATURE
PHILOSOPHY
• Some scientific views challenge the
Traditional view of human nature.
• Darwin argued that humans evolved from
earlier animal species through random
variations and a natural selection that is
the result of a struggle for existence.
• Darwin's view has been taken to imply that
human nature has no purpose and is not
unique.
CHAPTER TWO: HUMAN NATURE
PHILOSOPHY
• Existentialist views deny that all humans
have the same fixed nature. Instead,
existentialists claim that each human
creates his or her own nature.
• Existentialism asserts that although there
is no fixed human nature, there is still a
self that is a freely choosing, self-creating,
active agent.
CHAPTER TWO: HUMAN NATURE
PHILOSOPHY
• Feminists have argued that our concepts of
reason, appetites, emotions, mind, and body are
all biased in favor of men and against women,
yet the rationalist and Judeo-Christian view is
framed in terms of these sexist concepts.
Reason, rationality, and mind are seen as
superior "male" traits that must rule over the
inferior "female" traits of emotion and bodily
appetites, and this idea appears to be
fundamentally sexist.
CHAPTER TWO: HUMAN NATURE
PHILOSOPHY
• Descartes's dualist view of human nature
says that humans are immaterial minds
with material bodies. The material body is
observable and has color, size, shape,
and weight. The mind has no observable
color, size, or shape, but it has
consciousness. It is unclear how
immaterial entities can interact with
material ones.
CHAPTER TWO: HUMAN NATURE
PHILOSOPHY
• Materialist views say that humans are solely material
bodies.
• 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 says that conscious mental states is a
shorthand term for connections the body makes between
sensory inputs and behavioral outputs.
• The computer view of human nature says that computers
running programs can have minds and so the human
mind is a computer.
CHAPTER TWO: HUMAN NATURE
PHILOSOPHY
• The Traditional view of human nature and
our ordinary thinking assume that humans
have a self that endures through time.
• Descartes claims that the enduring self is
a soul.
• Locke argues that memory produces the
enduring self.
• Buddhism and Hume suggest that there is
no enduring self.
CHAPTER TWO: HUMAN NATURE
PHILOSOPHY
• Many of us believe in the view that the
human self can and should be
independent of others, self-sufficient, and
capable of thinking for itself.
• Yet Hegel argues that who we are
depends on the recognition of others and
on our culture.
CHAPTER TWO: HUMAN NATURE