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Human Nature Theories & Philosophers

  • Selfish View: Sigmund Freud, Thomas Hobbes and Moritz Schlick

  • The Selfish View: believed that humans are basically self-interested and act on survival.

  • The Traditional Rationalist View: Plato, Aristotle

  • The Traditional Rationalist View: In the rationalist view, we see ourselves as reasoning, free, moral beings who have an immaterial soul.

  • The Dualist View of Human Nature: Humans have minds and bodies.  Each component has its own concerns, qualities and features

  • The Dualist View of Human Nature: Rene Descartes

  • The Traditional Judeo-Christian View of Human Nature: humans are made in the image and likeness of God

  • The Traditional Judeo-Christian View of Human Nature: St. Augustin of Hippo & St. Thomas Aquinas

  • The Materialist View of Human Nature : Only the material body exists

  • The Materialist View of Human Nature: Hobbes, Schlick, Ninian Smart

  • Functionalism: Armstrong holds that mental activities and mental states are to be explained in terms of inputs and outputs, with inputs being the stimulation that affect the nervous system and outputs the behaviours that result.

  • Determinism : the theory that everything in the universe is governed by causal laws. In other words, every event has a prior condition that allows it to occur in a predictable manner. Therefore, human behaviour can be determined if the conditions for a certain behaviour are present. Furthermore, humans are essentially not free because behaviour is governed by existing conditions within the realm of causal law.

  • Computer View: According to Turing the mind is a computer following a program that generates certain outputs when given certain inputs.

  • The Behaviourist View of Human Nature: A school of psychology that restricts the study of human nature to what can be observed rather than states of consciousness.

  • The Behaviourist View of Human Nature: B.F. Skinner

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Human Nature Theories & Philosophers

  • Selfish View: Sigmund Freud, Thomas Hobbes and Moritz Schlick

  • The Selfish View: believed that humans are basically self-interested and act on survival.

  • The Traditional Rationalist View: Plato, Aristotle

  • The Traditional Rationalist View: In the rationalist view, we see ourselves as reasoning, free, moral beings who have an immaterial soul.

  • The Dualist View of Human Nature: Humans have minds and bodies.  Each component has its own concerns, qualities and features

  • The Dualist View of Human Nature: Rene Descartes

  • The Traditional Judeo-Christian View of Human Nature: humans are made in the image and likeness of God

  • The Traditional Judeo-Christian View of Human Nature: St. Augustin of Hippo & St. Thomas Aquinas

  • The Materialist View of Human Nature : Only the material body exists

  • The Materialist View of Human Nature: Hobbes, Schlick, Ninian Smart

  • Functionalism: Armstrong holds that mental activities and mental states are to be explained in terms of inputs and outputs, with inputs being the stimulation that affect the nervous system and outputs the behaviours that result.

  • Determinism : the theory that everything in the universe is governed by causal laws. In other words, every event has a prior condition that allows it to occur in a predictable manner. Therefore, human behaviour can be determined if the conditions for a certain behaviour are present. Furthermore, humans are essentially not free because behaviour is governed by existing conditions within the realm of causal law.

  • Computer View: According to Turing the mind is a computer following a program that generates certain outputs when given certain inputs.

  • The Behaviourist View of Human Nature: A school of psychology that restricts the study of human nature to what can be observed rather than states of consciousness.

  • The Behaviourist View of Human Nature: B.F. Skinner