Human Nature
•The most basic question in philosophy is ―What am I?‖
•Your answer to this question will profoundly affect the way you live your life.
Human Nature
•Your views about human nature:
• What it means to be a human being?
•What makes us different from everything else?
Human Nature
•This core idea of what and who you are affects and shapes your relationships with other
people.
If you think that human beings are basically social:
•You will relate to other people with trust, openness and love.
•You accept the kind gesture of a stranger without question.
•You are not surprised that others help you simply because they want to.
If you think human beings are basically self-interested:
•Then you mistrust others
•You are suspicious of kindness,
•You wonder what people are trying to get from you
•And feel that the only way to get help from others is by offering them payment.
Which criteria do you ascribe to?
•Why would one think one way or the other?
•What could have influenced you/them?
Human Nature
•Your views about human nature also influence your relationship to the universe.
If you believe that human beings are spiritual as well as material…..
•Then you are open to religious experience.
•You see yourself as having a soul, a spirit, that makes you distinct form the material
universe.
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Human beings are spiritual as well as material…..
•You see life in this material universe as a kind of preparation for a spiritual life in
another world and our universe.
If you believe that human beings are just a purely physical creature
An animal with a highly developed brain
But not fundamentally different from other animals
Then: Death for you is the end of existence
This material universe is all there is
And all you can have
Your view on Human Nature will affect what you do in your life.
•Do you believe we are fated to be what we are?
•Do genes and environment determine what we are and what we do?
Fated?
•Then you will feel you are locked into a particular life
•There is no use trying to escape or change it.
Do you believe that human beings are fundamentally free?
If you do then:
You can feel that you decide what you become.
You will feel you are in control of your life.
Your environment cannot and will not limit you in your life.
Free to become:
•Humans, you may believe, are free to make of themselves whatever they choose
• And thus are ultimately responsible for what they become.
Your basic view of Human Nature…
•Will even determine how you think we should set up our society.
•Crimes and Punishment
•Was he/she really responsible for their actions?
•Would the punishment fit this crime.
Human nature and correct society
•
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•
•Socialist or Capitalists?
•What motivates a worker?
•Self-Interest
or
•Community minded?
It is now clear a lot hangs in the balance on how you view human nature.
•What is a human being?
•What am I?
•Simple Questions:
• Many posited answers.
Basic Human Nature
•What are we essentially?
•What motivates our Actions?
Motivation(s)
•All of us naturally seek and enjoy Pleasure.
•Dislike and Avoid Pain.
•So: All our action are aimed at this end.
SO…..
•The basic human principle is selfishness.
•We are essentially selfish creatures.
Be Careful
•Selfishness has bad connotations.
•Self interest is a better way of looking at this subject.
Psychological Egoism
• The belief that human beings are so constituted that they act out of self interest.
Psychological Egoism
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• One can argue, from an evolutionary perspective, that we are wired to meet our needs.
• That is to say, egoism is embedded in our nature to ensure our survival.
Hierarchy of Needs (Maslow)
• Self Actualization Needs
• Self-Esteem Needs
• Love and Belongingness Needs
• Safety Needs
• Physiological Needs
Maslow‘s Hierarchy of Needs
Psychological Egoism
•Psychological egoism is the view that we are always motivated by self-interest, even in
seeming acts of altruism.
What About Altruism?
•Even seemingly altruistic actions are motivated by self-interested considerations.
Examples
You let someone borrow last week‘s notes.
Habitat for Humanity
Child drowning in pond
How Would the Egoist Respond?
• By all means, save the child. After all, you could get something in return.
Possible Rewards
•Monetary rewards.
•Recognition on TV, newspaper, radio.
•Praise from family, friends, coworkers.
Possible Rewards
•Conscience/sleep at night.
•―Warm and fuzzy‖ feeling of doing something good.
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Does Egoism Apply on a National Level As Well?
• Vietnam
• Afghanistan
• Iraq
Thomas Hobbes
Arguments for Psychological Egoism
Hobbes‘ State of Nature
•In the ―state of nature,‖ egoism will be the default moral philosophy.
•State of nature: state of human beings prior to or before the advent of formal
government
Hobbes‘ Reasons
People are primarily concerned with their own well-being and will act accordingly.
People want to avoid death and will act accordingly.
Hobbes‘ Reasons
People care about their future, as well as their present well-being, and will act
accordingly.
Satisfaction of one person‘s desires often conflicts with another person‘s desire
satisfaction (e.g., material scarcity).
Imagine
100 people (strangers) just plopped down on an island that only has the resources for
50 people.
What would you think would happen?
Imagine
•The ―default moral philosophy‖ is survival.
•Everyone will be out for themselves.
•Self-interest prevails.
Hobbes ‗Proved‘ Psychological Egoism
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Hobbes giving alms
•When asked why Hobbes was giving money to a beggar, He replied that he was not
doing so to relieve the beggar's distress but primarily to relieve his own distress as seeing
the beggar's distress.
Selfishness Revisited
Ring of Gyges
•Story in Plato‘s Republic.
•Glaucon is talking to Socrates.
•Glaucon offers a story which suggests that the only reason people act morally is that
they lack the power to behave otherwise.
Ring of Gyges
•Glaucon continues:
•Take away the fear of punishment and the ―just‖ and the ―unjust‖ person will both
behave in the same way: Unjustly and Immorally.
Ring of Gyges
•Crux of the story: A Shepard finds a ring that if turned one way it will make in
invisible. Turned the other he is visible again.
•Glaucon imagines that two magic rings exist.
•A just individual has one and an unjust person the other.
Ring of Gyges
•Glaucon posits that even the just person will be constant and determined to remain just
–not exploiting the situation.
•But eventually….Self-interest and hedonistic impulses will prevail.
Ring of Gyges
•The just will not be able to resist exploiting the advantage by acquiring whatever he/she
likes in complete safety; invading the space of others unawares, indulging in pleasures of
the flesh, punishing enemies with impunity or rewarding friends.
•The user would be untouchable God-like.
Ring of Gyges
•The just and the unjust will be indistinguishable and thus individual morality is
determined by necessity not conscious will and ethical/moral behavior for its own sake.
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•If self-indulgence can be practiced without fear of punishment then the propensity for
being unjust (because it is more profitable) is demonstrated will prevail.
Ring of Gyges
•Glaucon argued that any one with such power who never takes advantage of it, would be
considered by others, as an idiot.
•They would praise the ring holder to each other and keep up appearances with one
another from a fear that they too might suffer injustice.
Ring of Gyges
•The question is put to you……
“What would you do if you had such a ring, and knew that you would not get
caught.”
But the question remains…
•Do we only do what we do out of self interest.
•Are we at our core just selfish creatures?
Evaluate This Statement:
• ―No one does a good deed without expecting something in return.‖
Don’t we do things for others?
Altruism?
The egoist would respond:
―It may seem that we are acting unselfishly, but in fact we are working for the good
feeling that comes from having done the right thing.‖*
What about the Unselfish Saint?
•The egoist would say….
•The payoff is eternity in paradise.
Altruistic Acts.
“Altruism is a form of of pathetic self-destructiveness.”
Ayn Rand
Maybe it is not as bad as it sounds.
•Perhaps, selfishness is built right into our genes as a matter of evolutionary survival.
•For how long could an individual or even a species exist if it did not take care of itself?
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QUESTION?
•Subject: Selfishness/ Self interest.
Do you ascribe to this assessment of Human Nature?
AGAINST PHYCHOLOGICAL EGOISM
•It is argued that cooperation and fellow feeling are also essential parts of human nature.
•The urge to help a fellow creature in trouble is just as strong and just as ―natural‖ as the
urge to satisfy one's own desires.
In looking for the essential nature of human beings.
It is nothing less than an argument about our basic nature and what we should expect
from ourselves.
Pg. 540 text
What are Human Beings essentially?
•What view do we hold that makes us human?
•How do we differentiate ourselves from other creatures?
•How do we see ourselves?
Traditional Western View of Human Nature
Traditional Western View
•This view holds that a human being has an enduring spiritual self that is
• rational,
• purposive, and
• separate from the body.
Traditional Western View
•Two Versions:
• Rationalist View
• Religious View
Traditional Western Rationalist View
Traditional Western Rationalist View
•The ability to reason is our defining characteristic.
•Reason: The capacity for logical, rational, and analytic thought.
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Plato
•Human nature is composed of three parts: reason, spirit, and appetite.
•Reason must dominate.
Plato
•We are creatures with rational minds who can control our aggressions and appetites.
•―Don‘t let your anger get the best of you.‖
•―Control your craving for sweets.‖
Aristotle
•Our ability to reason is the unique characteristic that sets us apart from all the other
creatures.
•The best life for a human to lead is a contemplative one.
Implication of Aristotle‘s View:
•If our reasoning ability is what distinguishes humans from other creatures, can it also
distinguish humans from one another?
•E.g., Mensa (www.mensa.org)
Aristotle
•Greeks and Barbarians
•―The lower sorts are by nature slaves, and it is better for them as for all inferiors that
they should be under the rule of a master.‖
Traditional Western Religious View
Traditional Western Religious View
•According to this view, humans are made in the image of God.
•―God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and
female he created them.‖ (Genesis 1:27)
Image of God
•But what does it mean to be created in the image of God?
Image of God
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• The ability to love and know—will and intellect—are the distinguishing characteristics
of human beings.
Image of God
•The will is our ability to choose between good and evil, and this ability is the seat of the
most significant virtue: love.
•The fundamental religious duty is that of freely choosing to love and serve God.
Image of God
•Refusing to serve and love God is the greatest evil.
•We do good when we make God the center of our lives; we do wrong when we retreat
from this commitment.
Challenging the Traditional Western View
Feminist Challenge
Existentialist Challenge
Evolutionary Challenge
Feminist Challenge
•The traditional picture of human nature is inherently sexist—that is, it discriminates
against women.
•Plato: Reason should rule over our bodily desires and appetites.
•Aristotle: Men exercise reason better than women can.
Feminist Challenge
•The rationalist view associates men with rationality and mind. It associates women with
the bodily appetites and emotions that must be controlled.
•Reason is male and must rule, whereas feelings are female and must be ruled.
Feminist Challenge
•Even the religious view is sexist.
Does the Bible portray an inherently sexist view of human nature?
Genesis 3:16
―Your craving will be for your husband, and he will dominate you.‖
1 Peter 3:1
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―Wives in the same way be submissive to your husbands so that, if any of them do
not believe the word, they may be won over without words by the behavior of their wives
. . . .‖
1 Peter 3:7
―Husbands, in the same way be considerate as you live with your wives, and treat
them with respect as the weaker partner and as heirs with you of the gracious gift of life
so that nothing will hinder your prayers.‖
Ephesians 5:24
―Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their
husbands in everything.‖
1 Corinthians 11:8-9
• ―For man did not come from woman, but woman from man, neither was man created
for woman, but woman for man.‖
1 Timothy 2:11-14
• ―A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. I do not permit a woman to
teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent.‖
Women in Religious Vocations
• Priests
• Pastors
• Ministers
• Sunday school teachers
Question
•How many books of the Bible were written by women?
–Judaism
–Christianity
–Islam
–Mormonism
Quran
What does the Quran teach about women?
Surah 4:34
•―Men are the protectors and maintainers of women, because Allah has given the one
more strength than the other, and because they support them from their means.‖
Surah 4:34
•―Therefore, righteous women are devoutly obedient and guard in the husband‘s absence
what Allah would have them guard.‖
Polygamy
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Quran allows a man to have as many as four wives, so long as he treats them all
equally. The wives are not mere concubines, serving their husbands as slaves.
King Solomon
•―He had seven hundred wives of royal birth and three hundred concubines, and his
wives led him astray‖ (1 Kings 11:3).
Compare
•Eve leading Adam astray:
―The woman you put here with me—she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I
ate it‖ (Genesis 3:12).
•Pandora‘s Box
In challenging the traditional view, feminists make these three arguments:
(1) Women possess as much reason as men.
(2) Our feelings and emotions are just as valuable as our reason.
In challenging the traditional view, feminists make these three arguments:
(3) Why can‘t we simply view humans as rational creatures without associating ―reason‖
with men, and ―emotions‖ with women?
Feminist Humor
If a man makes a statement and there are no women around to hear him, is he still
wrong?
Existentialist Challenge
•This view denies any essential human nature; each of us creates our own essence
through free action.
•Humans are whatever they make themselves.
Jean-Paul Sartre
•1905-1980
•Being and Nothingness
•Leading advocate of existentialism during the years following WWII.
Jean-Paul Sartre
Freedom and personal responsibility.
Famous slogan: ―Man makes himself.‖
Jean-Paul Sartre
Humans are ―condemned to be free.‖
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Jean-Paul Sartre
We do not rely on God, some purported holy book, religious figure, or society to tell
us what we essentially are.
Jean-Paul Sartre
We must take full responsibility not only for our actions but also for our beliefs,
feelings, and attitudes.
We are what our choices make us; to be human means to create oneself.
Jean-Paul Sartre
―Existence precedes essence‖
Humans exist first, and then they make something of themselves.
Existentialism
•Is a philosophical movement characterized by an emphasis on individualism, individual
freedom, and subjectivity.
•Existentialism emphasises the idea that existence supercedes essence, i.e., that one must
be alive in order to create meaning, and that each person is therefore gifted with
individual moments to make choices
Implications of Sartre‘s Views
•No such thing as a universal human nature shared by all people.
•We each create our own nature.
Implications of Sartre‘s Views
―Man will do nothing unless he has first understood that he must count on no one
but himself; that he is alone, abandoned on earth in the midst of his infinite
responsibilities; without help, with no other aim than the one he sets himself, with no
other destiny than the one he forges for himself on this earth.‖
Let us say there is no God:
•Is Sartre then correct in assessing that we all are free?
•Can we really develop ourselves into any kind of human being we choose?
Critiquing Existentialism
• How free are we to create our own nature?
– Genetic predisposition
– Familial upbringing
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– Friends
– Society at large
Nihilism: Differs from Existentialism
•Nihilism as a philosophical position is the view that the world, and especially human
existence, is without meaning, purpose, comprehensible truth, or essential value.
•Existentialism says one can make one‘s own purpose.
•Nihilism: No purpose.
What is Evolution?
•Evolution is a change in the gene pool.
•A gene is a hereditary unit that can be passed on unaltered for many generations.
•The gene pool is the set of all genes in a species or population.
Darwinian Challenge
•―Man is absolutely not the crown of creation: every creature stands beside him at the
same stage of perfection.‖
Friedrich Nietzsche
What is Evolution?
•The theory of evolution by natural selection was put forward in a joint presentation by
Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace before the Linnaean Society of London in
1858.
Charles Darwin & Alfred Wallace
What is Evolution?
•They were not the first scientists to propose evolution, but their names are linked to this
idea because they proposed natural selection as the mechanism through which evolution
works.
Distinction
•The theory of how the first living organism appeared is often called evolution.
•But this should be called abiogenesis (the supposed development of living organisms
from nonliving matter).
Survive or Die
•Life survives where it can.
•Between 95-99% of all evolutionary lines that ever existed on this planet are now
extinct.
Dominance
•From an evolutionary standpoint, we are the most dominant species on Earth.
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•But for how many more years will our species continue?
Stephen Jay Gould
“Consciousness, *vouchsafed only to our species in the history of life on earth, is the
most god-awfully potent evolutionary invention ever developed.‖
( be kind enough to grant)
Webster‘s New World Dictionary
Stephen Jay Gould
•Consciousness:
•Although accidental and unpredictable, it has given Homo sapiens unprecedented power
both over the history of our own species and the life of the entire contemporary
biosphere.
Stephen Jay Gould
•Our patterns of thought and action lead to destruction and brutality as often as to
kindness and enlightenment.
Does Evolution Prove There Is No God?
•Many people, from evolutionary biologists to important religious figures like Pope John
Paul II, contend that the time-tested theory of evolution does not refute the presence of
God. They acknowledge that evolution is the description of a process that governs the
development of life on Earth.
Does Evolution Prove There Is No God?
•Like other scientific theories, including Copernican theory, atomic theory, and the germ
theory of disease, evolution deals only with objects, events, and processes in the material
world. Religious concepts are usually beyond the province of science. That is, they are
not amenable to scientific analysis.
Daniel Dennett
•Director of the Center for Cognitive Studies at Tufts University.
•Darwin’s Dangerous Idea
Darwin‘s Dangerous Idea
•Darwin's idea of natural selection makes people uncomfortable because it reverses the
direction of tradition.
Darwin‘s Dangerous Idea
•―Whereas people used to think of meaning coming from on high and being ordained
from the top down, now we have Darwin saying, ‗No, all of this design can happen, all of
this purpose can emerge from the bottom up without any direction at all.‘ And that's a
very unsettling thought for many people.‖
Darwin‘s Dangerous Idea
•―When we replace the traditional idea of God, the Creator, with the idea of the process
of natural selection doing the creating, the creation is as wonderful as it ever was. All
that great design work had to be done. It just wasn't done by an individual; it was done
by this huge process distributed over billions of years.‖
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So…what are we essentially?
•Selfish/ Self-interested/ Psychological egoism?
•Altruistic Nature?
•Reason sets us apart from all other creatures?
•Feminists claim that proclaiming reason as the dominant feature of man is chauvinistic.
So…what are we essentially?
•Religious? – Spiritual and Material? We are in the image of God?
•Just Material? Evolution/Darwinism, Materialism
•.
•Are we fated or are we free?
•Existentialism?: Sartre:―We are condemned to be free.‖ ―Existence precedes essence.‖
We started with a seemingly simple question….
―What am I?‖
----------------------------------------------
•What does it means to be a human being?
•What makes us different from everything else?
Importance of the Answer:
•We, as humans, have not established one definitive account of what we essentially are.
•The gravity of this conundrum cannot be overstated.
Because….
• The consequences of what we think of and about ourselves affects everything we do in
this lifetime.
•How we treat each other.
•How we perceive our universe
•And directs our actions to ourselves and to others in everyday decisions and actions.
How you define yourself is how you are defined. End
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