PHILO - HUMAN PERSON

2 approaches in the philosophy of the human person

Metaphysical Approach & Existential Approach:

Metaphysical Approach

This focuses on the kinds of substances (or materials) and capacities that uniquely make up a person.

examines the essential components of a human person.

Existential Approach

This focuses on the kind of life, mode of existence, that is unique to a human person

examines the essential features of the human way of life.

Martin Heidegger (1889-1976)

a German Philosopher. He is widely acknowledged to be one of the most original and important philosophers of the 20th century, while remaining one of the most controversial.

Components of the human person

- A person has a body which has physical properties

- Others believe that a person ONLY has a human body

- Still, others believe that there are other components of the

human person, i.e., nonbodily component

Non-bodily components are called in different ways

- Soul which emphasizes the “life-giving” function;

- Mind which emphasizes the person’s consciousness;

- Spirit which emphasizes the nonbodily, nonbiological, or

nonphysical nature of the human person

UNSPIRITED BODY VIEW

claims that a human person is essentially a corpus/body and nothing more; the belief that human persons do not have a spiritual component.

DISEMBODIED SPIRIT VIEW

claims that a human person is essentially a spirit; the body is dependent on the spirit: the body will die with no spirit, but the spirit will survive even without the body.

EMBODIED SPIRIT VIEW

claims that the human person is essentially defined as a unity of body and spirit/ soul

JOHN JAMIESON CARSWELL SMART (1920 -2012)

an Australian Philosopher who advocated the Mind-Brain Identity Theory, which claims that what we call the “mind” is nothing but the brain, and the “mental states” are the neural states of the brain

GILBERT RYLE (1900 – 1976)

Posited the belief on behaviorism which claims that what we call mental states simply refer to one’s inclinations or tendencies to show certain behaviors

PLATO (428 – 347 BC)

believed that the “soul” and the body are two different substances; believed that the soul is immortal through his Theory of Recollection. For him Knowledge is not found in the external world, but is internally located, in the consciousness

RENE DESCARTES (1596-1650)

A French Philosopher who claimed that there are two types of substances: mind (nonphysical kind)and matter (physical kind)
He argued that we can doubt that we have a body, but we cannot doubt that we have a mind. To doubt is to be conscious and to be conscious is to have a mind. “Cogito ergo sum.” (I think (doubt), therefore I am.”

ARISTOTLE (384B.C. – 322 B.C.)

He considers things as composed of two coprinciples: MATTER and FORM

FORM

is the principle which actualizes a thing (ACT)

MATTER

is viewed as the potentiality to receive the form (POTENCY)

Vegetative/Nutritive Soul

are the souls of plants that enable plants to perform activities necessary for nourishment, growth and reproduction.

Sensitive Soul

are the souls of the animals that enable animals to perform the activities necessary for nourishment, growth, reproduction, locomotion and sensation.

Rational Soul

are the souls of the human persons that enable them to perform the activities necessary for nourishment, growth, reproduction, sensation, locomotion, intelligence and freedom or freewill.

ST. THOMAS AQUINAS (1224 – 1274)

Rejected Plato’s account of the soul: Human being is essentially his soul; a human being is a soul using a body.

believes that the human person is the unity of body and soul

MIND’S IDENTITY

General Level and Particular Level

General Level

the focus is on how to distinguish between minds and non-minds, mental states and non-mental states (physical states)

Particular Level

the focus in on how to distinguish mental states from one another.

Five distinguishing features of the mind

Consciousness, qualia/subjective quality, intentionality, ontological subjectivity and privacy

Consciousness

It is the state of sentience or awareness “that typically begins when we wake up in the morning from a dreamless sleep and continue throughout the day until we fall asleep again.” (Searle, 1999, 41)

Subjective Quality

particular way that we become conscious of or experience our own mental states, i.e., the particular way we experience the hurting sensation of having a toothache or headache, particular way of tasting food, et al.

Quale is the technical term

Intentionality

refers to the property of the mental states to have contents

Ontological Subjectivity

refers to a mental state that exists only as a person has or experiences them

Privacy

a mental state that which are only directly knowable to the person who has or experiences them