INTRODUCTION TO THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE HUMAN PERSON ACTIVITY MODULE 4

Welcome to your module. I have designed this sheet facilitate learning while I am not available. Readings and
activities will be provided to make sure that “effective learning will happen”. 
Please read this paper. Promise oral exams will happen. TY

Competency
Enumerate the objectives he/she really wants to achieve and to define the projects he/she really wants to do in
his/her life
This is easy for you. Dreaming is, doing isn’t.
Activity 9
Instruction: Answer the questions provided.
1. What do you wish to do in the future? It may be a dream aspiration or a personal project.
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2. How will you go about doing it?
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Thank you for following instructions! Let’s proceed to our next topic

Competency

Explain the meaning of life (where will all these lead to)

Using the idea on trying to find meaning, you will basically take time to find what sort of ending you wish to
have. How will you find your meaning? What is it that makes you fight onwards? Certainly there is something
that drives you further.
Activity 10
Instructions:
Essay: Write an essay on the meaning of your existence. What is it that gives your life a specific meaning? What
makes your existence specifically unique and necessary? What drives you further towards a goal that you may
or may not achieve?
Sample:
When asked about the meaning of life, I am not pretty sure. I feel that my existence is driven by my passion for
poetry, art, and knowledge. My love for poetry and my desire to persuade hearts in subtle ways challenge me to
improve myself despite not knowing how. So ikaw nay buhat sa imoha kay diri ra ni taman.
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Competency

Reflect on the meaning of his/her own life.

We are reaching the endgame of this Philosophy course. We are both elated we reached this point. Fun right?

Subject Matter
1.4 Death and What We Are
Death for you and me is constituted by the loss of our capacity to sustain ourselves using vital processes. This
characterization of death could be sharpened if we had a clearer idea of what we are, and the conditions under
which we persist. However, the latter is a matter of controversy.
There are three main views: animalism, which says that we are human beings (Snowdon 1990, Olson 1997,
2007); personism, which says that we are creatures with the capacity for self-awareness; and mindism, which
says that we are minds (which may or may not have the capacity for self-awareness) (McMahan 2002).

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 Animalism suggests that we persist over time just in case we remain the same animal; mindism suggests that we
persist just when we remain the same mind. Personism is usually paired with the view that our persistence is
determined by our psychological features and the relations among them (Locke 1689, Parfit 1984).
If we are animals, with the persistence conditions of animals, our deaths are constituted by the cessation of the
vital processes that sustain our existence as human beings. If we are minds, our deaths are constituted by the
extinction of the vital processes that sustain our existence as minds. And if persistence is determined by our
retaining certain psychological features, then the loss of those features will constitute death.
These three ways of understanding death have very different implications. Severe dementia can destroy a great
many psychological features without destroying the mind, which suggests that death as understood by
personists can occur even though death as understood by mindists has not. Moreover, human beings
sometimes survive the destruction of the mind, as when the cerebrum dies but the brainstem does not, leaving
an individual in a persistent vegetative state. It is also conceivable that the mind can survive the extinction of
the human being: this might occur if the brain is removed from the body, kept alive artificially, and the
remainder of the body is destroyed (assuming that a bare brain is not a human being). These possibilities
suggest that death as understood by mindists can occur even though death as understood by animalists has not
(and also that the latter sort of death need not be accompanied by the former.)
1.5 Death and Existence
What is the relationship between existence and death? May people and other creatures continue to exist after
dying, or cease to exist without dying?
Take the first question: may you and I and other creatures continue to exist for some time after our lives end?
The view that death entails our annihilation has been called the termination thesis (Feldman 1992). The position
that we can indeed survive death we might call the dead survivors view. The dead survivors view has been
defended by various theorists, most notably Fred Feldman (1992, 2000, 2013). One point cited in its favor is that
we commonly refer to ‘dead animals’ (and ‘dead plants’) which may suggest that we believe that animals
continue to exist, as animals, while no longer alive. The idea might be that an animal continues to count as the
same animal if enough of its original components remain in much the same order, and animals continue to meet
this condition for a time following death (Mackie 1997). On this view, if you and I are animals (as animalists say)
then we could survive for a time after we are dead, albeit as corpses. In fact, we could survive indefinitely, by
arranging to have our corpses preserved.
However, this way of defending the dead survivors view may not be decisive. The terms ‘dead animal’ and ‘dead
person’ seem ambiguous. Normally, when we use ‘dead people’ or ‘dead animal’ we mean to speak of persons
or animals who lived in the past. One dead person I can name is Socrates; he is now a ‘dead person’ even
though his corpse surely has ceased to exist. However, in certain contexts, such as in morgues, we seem to use
the terms ‘dead animal’ and ‘dead person’ to mean “remains of something that was an animal” or “remains of
something that was a person.” On this interpretation, even in morgues calling something a dead person does
not imply that it is a person.
What about the second question: can creatures cease to exist without dying? Certainly things that never were
alive, such as bubbles and statues, can be deathlessly annihilated. Arguably, there are also ways that living
creatures can be deathlessly annihilated (Rosenberg 1983, Feldman 1992, Gilmore 2013). Perhaps an amoeba’s
existence ends when it splits, replacing itself with two amoebas, and the existence of chlamydomonas ends
when pairs of them fuse to form a zygote. Yet when amoebas split, and chlamydomonas fuse, the vital
processes that sustain them do not cease. If people could divide like amoebas, perhaps they, too could cease to
exist without dying. (For a famous discussion of division, fusion, and their implications, see Parfit 1981.) If such
‘deathless exits’ are possible, we would have to modify the loss of life account of death.
However, proponents of that account can hold their ground. They can say that division, fusion, and other
apparent examples of deathless exits are unusual ways of dying, because nonexistence is not brought about via
the destruction of vital processes, but they are not ways of escaping death altogether. Proponents of the loss of
life account might also turn the tables on its critics, and argue as follows: nothing can be alive unless it exists, so
if something ceases to exist it ceases to be alive, but to cease to be alive is to die. So there are no deathless exits
after all.
1.6 Criteria for Death
Defining death is one thing; providing criteria by which it can be readily detected or verified is another. A
definition is an account of what death is is
; when, and only when its definition is met, death has necessarily occurred. A criterion for death, by contrast,
lays out conditions by which all and only actual deaths may be readily identified. Such a criterion falls short of a
definition, but plays a practical role. For example, it would help physicians and jurists determine when death has
occurred.
In the United States, the states have adopted criteria for death modeled on the Uniform Determination of Death
Act (developed by the President’s Commission, 1981), which says that “an individual who has sustained either
(1) irreversible cessation of circulatory and respiratory functions, or (2) irreversible cessation of all functions of
the entire brain, including the brain stem, is dead. A determination of death must be made in accordance with
accepted medical standards.” In the United Kingdom, the accepted criterion is brain stem death, or the
“permanent functional death of the brain stem” (Pallis 1982).

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 These current criteria are subject to criticism, even if we put aside reservations concerning the qualifier
‘irreversible’. Animalists might resist the criteria since the vital processes of human beings whose entire brains
have ceased to function can be sustained artificially using cardiopulmonary assistance. Mindists and personists
might also resist the criteria, on the grounds that minds and all psychological features can be destroyed in
human beings whose brain stems are intact. For example, cerebral death can leave its victim with an intact brain
stem, yet mindless and devoid of self-awareness.
10 activities are probably enough. Thank you for your time

Activity 11
Comprehensive Orals (please read subject matter)

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