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
• Psychologists such as Freud claimed that
humans are cruel, aggressive and selfish.
• Hobbes and Schlick claimed that humans
act only out of self-interest and are
material bodies.

CHAPTER TWO: HUMAN NATURE

• Our views about human nature influence
our relationship to the universe.
• If we believe that humans are both
spiritual and material wouldn’t that make
us open to religious experience? That our
life in this material world is a kind of
preparation for a spiritual life in another
world. Death is not the end of existence.

CHAPTER TWO: HUMAN NATURE

• Beliefs about human nature also influence
our view as to how society is to be
arranged.
• Capitalism: humans are essentially self-
interested. The best way to get people to
work is to allow every individual to keep
whatever benefits he or she produces and
not to support those who do not work.

CHAPTER TWO: HUMAN NATURE

• Socialism: inspire people to work for one
another’s good and share whatever each
produces. Humans are cooperative and
unselfish.
• Socialist institutions such as welfare
programs and redistributive taxes are
based on the idea that human nature is
basically social and that humans can and
should share with one another.
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

• People with near-death experiences make
some assumptions about human nature:
• All humans have a self: the ego or “I” that
exists in a physical body and that is
conscious and rational.
• The body is a physical or material entity
whereas the self is an immaterial or
spiritual entity that can survive the death of
its body.
CHAPTER TWO: HUMAN NATURE
• This self endures through time. Not only
does the self remain the same self
throughout its life, it can also continue to
be the same self after death.
• The self is an independent individual: it
exists separate from other things and
people, with an independent identity.

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

• Plato is of the opinion that reason, appetite
and aggression are the three main parts of
human nature. Because reason can know
how we ought to live, it should rule
appetites and aggression.
• Aristotle concurs with Plato. For him,
reason is our highest power and what
distinguishes human nature. The purpose
of humans is to use their reason to think
and control their desires and aggressions.
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

• Darwin’s theory undermined the idea that
living things and humans are designed for
a purpose.
• In Darwin’s view the human power to
reason is not qualitatively unique but is
merely a more developed version of the
cognitive powers of nonhuman primates.
Humans are not made in the image of
God, but in the image of the apes that
preceded them.
CHAPTER TWO: HUMAN NATURE
• Critics say there is evidence of evolution
within species but incomplete evidence of
evolution of one species into another.
• Other critics say even if evolution occurs,
God can direct evolution, so evolution is
the tool God uses to design humans for a
purpose.
• Other critics say reason is unique to
humans, in particular the use of linguistic
reasoning and communication.
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

• Sartre: “Existence precedes essence”.
What it means is that humans are first
born (exist) and then define their nature
(essence) by acting.
• Existentialism says there is no universal
human nature, no rational human nature,
no purpose for human nature.

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