PHILOSOPHY LESSON 7

Metaphysical Approach
 Focuses on substance or materials and capacities that
uniquely make up human person
 Examine essential component/features of a human
person

Existential Approach
 Focuses on kind of life, or mode of existence that is
unique to a human person
 Examine the essential features of the human way of
life

Martin Heidegger (1962. 149-153)

 Metaphysical approach as dealing with the what of
human person
 Existential Approach dealing with the who of a
human person

Example Tarzan
 Metaphysical-features and mental capacities as a
person
 Existential- He lives like apes
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non bodily component- believes that its not only body

Human components
 Soul-Life giving function
 Mind-Consciousness
 Spirit-non bodily human component

 Unspirited body view- Humans is just onlybody

 Disembodied spirit view- The body is dependent on
the spirit, spirit can live without body but body
cannot
-Plato and Rene Descartes
-Substance dualism -Body is physical, Spirit is non
Physical
-Immortality of Spirit
 Embodied spirit view- both body and spirit claims
that the human is essentially the unity of this two
-Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas
-Body is material aspect or matter
-Soul formal aspect or form
Example Knife matter is metallic form is ability to cut
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-Subsitent than substance (Aquinas)

-Preferable

Marks of the Mental- Defining features of

Mind(Contemporary philosophers)
Spiritual components-Soul and Mind
Mind- essential feature of personhood
Rational soul- Aristotle unique human capacity
Person Identity-Sense, based on the continuity of
consciousness

 General Mind- focuses on how to distinguish minds

and non minds/mental and physical state
 Particular level- distinguished mental state from one
another

Five major properties of Mind

 Consciousness
 Subjective Equality
 Intentionality
 Ontological subjectivity
 Privacy
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Consciousness-awareness
-John Searle- Sentience or Awareness

List of consciousness indicators(Main 2003)

 Cognitions(Knowing, Believing, Undestanding,
thinking, reasoning)
 Emotions(envy,anger, fear, joy)
 Sensation(pains, tickles, itches)
 Perception(senses)
 Quasi Perception (Hallucinations,dreaming,
Imagining)
 Conations(Acting Trying, Wanting, Intending)

Subjective Quality- Particular way that individual is

conscious