Adam Goetz

11-12-2020

Dr. Phillipson, PHI 350

Final Argumentative Paper

Throughout the course of human history, philosophers and scientists have pursued and

argued about the concept of the human person. The way one views personhood is crucial, for in

some scenarios it determines the fate of a human life. Science has popularized a biological view,

called materialism in philosophy, that sees humans for only their visible working parts to define

humans as persons. There exists middle ground between seeing humans for what they are made

of and seeing humans for their spiritual element, as religion would provide, called dualism, that

appreciates the fact that humans consist of spiritual and bodily essence. However, both of these

philosophies don’t exactly capture the essence of personhood, for their views of personhood

don’t give sufficient reason for human nature to tend towards being social beings and entering

into community. One could argue that, together, they each encapsulate an essential aspect of

personhood, but this essay will argue that a materialist or dualist view of the human person is a

lackluster view of human identity and its capacity to construct community, for human identity is

better portrayed by a complex intermingling of the elements of the soul, brain, emotion, and

body. This essay will achieve this by bringing forth and showing the inadequacies of materialism

and dualism, showing the need for the proposed elements of the person, and will finish by

showing how this provides for community formation and interaction.

To more clearly address the insufficiencies of these philosophies, they first must be

spelled out and defined properly to avoid committing a straw man fallacy. The most ancient and
most common view of dualism, known as radical dualism, views “the soul (or mind) is separable

from the body, and the person is identified with the former.”1 This can be seen strongly held by

the ancient Greek philosopher Plato as he viewed the human body as an “imprisonment is that it

is caused by lust”2 that a truly wise person “strives to release... from [its] captivity.”3 This

Platonic or radical dualism views the soul as this unchanging, animating principle that goes to

and participates in the absolutes of knowledge “the pure, and eternal, and immortal, and

unchangeable, to which [the soul] is akin.”4 The body, conversely, is viewed as this limited,

changing conduit that bounds and imprisons the soul, so a Platonic dualist’s goal in life is to

liberate the soul from being “defiled and impure when [it] leaves the body, from being ever with

it… besotted by it and by its desires and pleasures.”5 This shows the insufficiency of dualism, for

it denies any goodness or reason to the human body.

Turning towards materialism, it views all of the urges, desires, and passions as mere

physiological movements and “denies the existence (or at least the relevance) of any immaterial,

spiritual dimensions to reality and life… views the human as a mere body, without a soul.”6 This

shallow philosophy reduces the human person down to “nothing but a pack of neurones… no

more than the behavior of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules.”7

Together, this is what draws out the issue of materialism, the fact that people are viewed as

soulless physical components responsible for all their emotions, desires, and thoughts. This

1
Nancey Murphy, “Human Nature: Historical, Scientific, and Religious Issues (1998)”, in Whatever Happened to the Soul?, ed.
Warren S. Brown, Nancey Murphy and H. Newton Malony (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 1998), 24.
2
Plato, “Phaedo”, from Plato Phaedo PDF, 85.
3
Ibid, 85.
4
Ibid, 82.
5
Ibid, 84.
6
Stephen G. Post, “A Moral Case for Nonreductive Physicalism (1998)”, in Whatever Happened to the Soul?, ed. Warren S.
Brown, Nancey Murphy and H. Newton Malony (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 1998), 197.
7
Malcolm Jeeves, “Brain, Mind, and Behavior (1998)” in Whatever Happened to the Soul?, ed. Warren S. Brown, Nancey
Murphy and H. Newton Malony (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 1998), 87.
establishes the insufficiency of materialism, for it denies people their identity, since every person

is seen as soulless matter only differentiated by appearance.

To address this philosophical issue, one should begin defining personhood based on what

is required of it. Personhood grants people their individual rights, but could a shallow view of

personhood such as materialism suffice for granting one personhood? Well, play the devil’s

advocate: since materialism sees a person’s existence as result of physical underpinnings and the

same for animals, there would be no difference between the two, as they’re both materially

constructed. Surely, this supports animal rights activists in their beliefs, but does that mean

animals have the same capacities and deserve the same rights as humans? Animals have

consciousness, thinking capacity, and even have their own language based on subtle cues. What

differentiates human language from animals’? The “aspect of language that enables [humans] to

handle not just symbols- chimps and apes can do that- but to represent words… to manipulate

internal symbols”8 is what brings more rationality to the plate for declaring personhood. The

most compelling points a materialist could pose to account for this capability is that “the human

brain is 3.1 times as big… for a nonhuman primate of the identical weight”9 and “there are two

specializations… unique to the human brain: cerebral asymmetries and the existence of speech

areas.”10 Could personhood be defined by having a larger brain? It does not seem that

macroencephalic individuals are any more or less of a person than others as some lose physical

operation facility while other times there can be rare cases of savant syndrome,11 but does the

presence of these neurons assigned to the speech areas indicative of personhood? If one removed

8
Ibid, 85.
9
Ibid, 85.
10
Ibid, 85.
11
Brogaard, Berit. “Kim Peek, the Real Rain Man (2012)” Psychology Today. Sussex Publishers.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-superhuman-mind/201212/kim-peek-the-real-rain-man.
these areas in a human, it only hinders their ability to communicate, but it doesn’t change their

identity or their consciousness. How can materialists defend consciousness, then? Consciousness

is crucial for higher-level linguistic operation, but it can’t be isolated in any particular area.

Research has found consciousness “is conceived to be a dynamic emergent property of brain

activity, neither identical with nor reducible to… neural events.”12 This establishes that

personhood requires not only a brain but also consciousness.

Consciousness proves problematic for materialism, shifting the focus towards an

immateriality that dualism supports. Dualism supposes the soul’s presence, which would suffice

for animating and bringing consciousness to persons: “The human soul is essentially spiritual…

the principle of material life and differentiates animal and vegetative functions from itself.”13

This does leave, however, the problem of the body in the dualist view. Since the body has

seemingly irrational urges, as stoics would view them, this creates an irrational view of the

construct of bodily personhood, for they would inquire about the body’s desires for things that

are bad for it, like smoking. Is the body intrinsically bad though? The body points persons

towards a higher reality of community, for it permits the soul to express itself and show care for

others in sharing or tending to their needs. One could argue pain is irrational or indicates bodily

weakness or insufficiency. However, pain helps people realize problems or when something

needs to be fixed or cured, like chronic pain indicating the spine is misaligned and won’t provide

for safe or effective lifting. Turning towards another stoic view, they could argue that negative

emotions that one feels are hindrances to one’s wellbeing, but emotions can rather indicate the

value that something or someone played in one’s life. Not necessarily saying all that one

encounters in life is “valued simply on account of some instrumental relation they bear to the
12
Malcolm Jeeves, “Brain, Mind, and Behavior (1998)” in Whatever Happened to the Soul?, ed. Warren S. Brown, Nancey
Murphy and H. Newton Malony (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 1998), 88.
13
Robert Spaemann, “Souls (2017)” in Persons, ed. Oliver O’Donovan (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017), 153.
agent’s satisfaction… under the influence of Utilitarianism,”14 rather one makes evaluative

judgments “inclusive of all to which the agent ascribes intrinsic value”15 to objects in their life,

judgments “concerned with the person’s flourishing.”16 In judging, one recognizes things held

important roles in their life, for stability or resolution. Ultimately, this shows the considered

value of emotion and the body within regards to personhood in contrast to materialism or

dualism, leaving personhood defined by possessing a brain, soul, body, and emotion.

With the establishment of the definition of human identity, this translates well into the

nature and influence of community. To articulate this, the example of a religious community will

be used to show the importance of this defined personhood. Humans, the homo sapiens, the

knowers and thinkers that can reflect symbols and manipulate them as mentioned previously,

have tendencies to learn, know, and explore phenomena to better understand the world. For

things that one can’t understand alone, requiring confirmation by another, this opens up humans

in their nature to ask further questions and rely on others to hopefully better understand this

unexplained phenomenon, reflecting what it means to themselves, and contemplating their own

identity. People do this rationally by forming scientific communities to provide answers and

stability to humans. However, when scientific communities can’t rationalize phenomena, this

leaves humans grasping for this other-ness, known as religion, to explain the unknown. Since

humans have souls, this provides capacity for religiosity so people don’t only cognize and

verbalize phenomena with their enlarged cerebral cortices and language centers, rather they also

realize and find their identity in religion with others with similar questions and desires. This

collection of these religiosities of people’s souls is what tends them towards forming a religion

14
Martha Nussbaum “Emotions as Judgments of Value (2001)” in Upheavals of Thought, ed. Press Syndicate of the
University of Cambridge (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 32.
15
Ibid, 32.
16
Ibid, 31.
based on the common identity defined by this faith, from which evolves morality, laws, and

ethics. These evolutions prove crucial for the health of the community so that they can recognize

intruders or foreigners when they encounter one with opposing views or different beliefs and rule

out if they are a threat. For example, a Catholic community encounters someone who doesn’t

view babies as persons since infants can’t articulate themselves, and this person goes on to

mistreat babies. Further into this influence and nature of community, the presence of normal and

healthy-bodied persons together is what sets the precedent for health standards. People of certain

communities would want to maintain good health using these standards, for they would want to

keep living, express their emotions for each other, and fit in to the community. Then, from this

sharing of thoughts, beliefs, and health care practices, this reinforces the eudaimonistic

judgments that people place on the value of their community, for they realize, in order to

flourish, they need this community to provide stability and community. From this stable

community, people can realize what is bodily abnormal, such as congenital defects or diseases,

and look out for their own and the safety of the community. Ultimately, human identity can be

established intrinsically through possessing a body, mind, soul, and emotion, but then there can

be a reinforcement of another side to human identity that can only be provided and confirmed by

community. Another eudaimonistic judgment that people make about their community is

realizing how they’re set apart from the community in bodily, emotional, spiritual, or intellectual

differences to provide for their more individualized identity. On the flip side of the coin, there is

a bottom-up eudaimonistic judgment that people place to see how they’re part of the community

and contribute to its wellbeing. This concludes and demonstrates the aim of this paper, that the

elements of emotion, brain, body, and soul provide for personal identity and for entering and

constructing community as it is valuable to the person, further, a person in community.