Comprehensive Study Notes: IB Diploma Philosophy - Being Human

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CORE THEME: BEING HUMAN

Introduction to the Core Theme

The central theme of the DP philosophy course is "Being human." It focuses on the fundamental questions and issues regarding what it means to be human, both as individuals and as members of wider communities. The structure centers around six interrelated key concepts:

• Identity
• Personhood
• Freedom
• Mind and Body
• The Self and Others
• Human Nature

Understanding Concepts and Frameworks

• Denition of a Concept: A concept is a feature or characteristic of something, often abstract but active in the world.
• The Role of Concepts (Solomon): Robert C. Solomon notes that concepts give form to experience and make articulation possible. They allow us to recognize specific objects and people rather than seeing the world as a "big blur."
• Philosophical Plumbing (Midgley): Important concepts like truth, time, beauty, and cause act as the "pipes" in Mary Midgley’s metaphorical philosophical plumbing.
• Conceptual Frameworks: Concepts rarely occur in isolation; they tie together into frameworks that provide a "worldview" through which we organize specific concepts and make decisions.

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THE STRUCTURE OF THE TEXTBOOK

Conceptual Interconnectedness

While the textbook is divided into six chapters focusing on the concepts prescribed by the IB Programme, these ideas are deeply connected. One can read them in any order, though the book suggests starting with Chapter 2: Human Nature and Chapter 3: Personhood to establish foundational denitions.

Skills and Assessment

• Practicing Philosophy: The course emphasizes "doing" philosophy, not just reading about philosophers, focusing on contemporary applications of historical ideas.
• Stimulus Material: The textbook includes a bank of stimulus material to help students turn non-philosophical material into philosophical arguments.
• Pedagogical Goal: The skill of critical thinking should stay with the student long after school examinations.

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HUMAN NATURE: PHILOSOPHICAL PERSPECTIVES

Essential Questions

• What is at the heart of who we are?
• Which picture of man is more suitable: rational being, irrational animal, or blank slate?

Historical Stimulus: Hamlet

Shakespeare's Hamlet (Act II, Scene 2) describes man as:

• "How noble in reason, how innite in faculty!"
• "The beauty of the world. The paragon of animals."
• And yet, a "quintessence of dust."

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THE THREE MODELS OF HUMAN NATURE

1. Man as a Rational Being

This is the traditional Western view. The mind is the rational self, granting knowledge and self-control.

• Key Thinkers: Plato, René Descartes.

2. Man as an Irrational Animal

Challenges the Western view by arguing humans are driven by instincts and desires beyond their control.

• Key Thinkers: Charles Darwin, Sigmund Freud, Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche.

3. Man as a Blank Slate

Arguing humans are born without fixed nature; they are created by culture, experiences, and choices.

• Key Thinkers: John Locke, John B. Watson, Karl Marx, Judith Butler.

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RATIONALISM AND PLATO

Dening Rationalism

• Objectivity: Historically, rationality involves being "objective"—considering the world independently of desire, impulse, or instinct.
• Proportion (Ratio): Rational inquiry means judgments are proportional to the strength of evidence (A.C. Grayling).

Plato's Account of the Soul

Plato claims humans are dominated by reason. He posits:

1. All humans have a soul (referring to mind and thought).
2. The soul has three parts.
3. The uniquely human part (Reason) controls desires and accesses truth objectively.

The Example of the Thirsty Man

Plato uses the example of a man thirsty for poisoned water. If the man resists, a different part of himself must be overcoming desire to master the impulse.

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THE TRIPARTITE SOUL

Three Parts of the Soul (Plato)

1. Appetitive Part: Basic desires (hunger, thirst, lust).
2. Spirited/Passionate Part: Anger, resentment, will for self-assertion/recognition, drive for power.
3. Reason: Ability to make correct judgments and choose actions based on good reasons.

Philosophical Assumptions in Rationalism

• It assumes human nature is tied exclusively to the conscious mind.
• It assumes the mind is separate from the body (Cartesian Dualism).

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PLATO'S CHARIOT ANALOGY

The Components

In the Phaedrus, Socrates describes the soul as a chariot:

• The White Horse (thumos): Passion or spirit; drive for recognition and self-expression; aggression.
• The Black Horse (epithumetikon): Appetite; base worldly impulses; hunger and short-term gain.
• The Charioteer (logistikon): Reason; the king of the soul that must master the two horses to achieve harmony and goodness.

Key Concepts

• Phenomenal Justication: Evidence based on rst-hand subjective experience (the war of impulses within).
• Epistemology: The study of what we can know and how we know it.

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PLATO'S EPISTEMOLOGY AND FORMS

The Visible vs. The Intelligible

Plato was skeptical of the visible world because it is subject to change and decay. Only eternal, unchanging truths (like mathematics) are "really" real.

The Theory of Forms

• Denition: Forms are purely intellectual objects that never change and constitute ultimate reality.
• Example: "Sunniness": A particular sunny day is just an instance. The real "sunniness itself" is a Form that provides the perfect structure behind the temporary instances.

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DESCARTES AND LATER RATIONALISM

René Descartes: The Father of Modern Philosophy

Descartes was an arch-rationalist and mathematician. He believed mathematics represented the "language of the universe" (Galileo) and that reason reveals the ultimate nature of reality independently of experience.

The Concept of Forms: The Horse

Plato argues that while particular horses die, the intellectual concept of "Horse" (the Form) is permanent and perfect. The world we experience is a "shadow of ultimate reality."

Terms

• Empirical: Coming from the senses.
• Transcendent: Existing above or beyond ordinary realm of experience.

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FOUNDATIONALISM AND LOGICAL PRINCIPLES

Self-Evidence

Descartes sought indubitable foundations for knowledge. His classic example is "I exist": to doubt one's existence, one must think, and to think, one must exist.

The Four Laws of Thought (Schopenhauer/Leibniz)

1. Law of Identity: $a = a$. Everything is itself.
2. Law of Non-Contradiction: $a \neq \neg a$. Nothing can be both true and false at once.
3. Law of Excluded Middle: Everything is either true or false; no third option.
4. Principle of Sufcient Reason: Nothing happens without a reason; everything has an explanation.

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THE COSMOLOGICAL ARGUMENT

Contingent vs. Necessary Beings

Frederick Copleston (1948 debate with Bertrand Russell) used the Principle of Sufcient Reason to argue for God's existence:

• Everything in the universe is a contingent being (it might not have existed and requires a cause).
• To have a full explanation, we must reach a Necessary Being—one that is its own sufcient reason.
• Without a necessary being (God), there is ultimately no full explanation for existence.

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OBJECTIVITY AND AUTONOMY

The Three Features of Rationalism

1. Knowledge: Accessing certainty through abstract principles.
2. Objectivity: Separating judgments from feelings/values (e.g., a judge in a court or the scientific attitude).
3. Autonomy (Self-Control): Taking charge of impulses based on understanding.

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THE GOOD LIFE IN RATIONALISM

Teleological Reasoning

Plato and Aristotle argue that all things have a telos (purpose/nature). To be "good" is to perform one's nature well.

• Plato (Gorgias): The pursuit of pleasure is like a "leaky vessel" (never satisfied). The good life is acting in accordance with reason and virtue.
• Aristotle: Humans are good at reason, so reason is the core of our nature. As social/political animals, humans exercise reason best in debate.

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CRITIQUES OF REASON: HOBBES AND HUME

Thomas Hobbes

• Reason is merely calculation: comparing costs and benefits using invented concepts.
• Nominalism: Concepts do not necessarily "cut nature at the joints"; they are limited by our sense organs (e.g., bats use echolocation; snakes use thermoception).
• Reason is a mundane tool for navigate life, not a path to the divine.

David Hume

• Empiricism: All mind content comes from sense experience (impressions).
• Critique of Imagination: We can imagine God (infinite version of human power) or Aliens (combinations of earth animals), but nothing truly new.

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HUME'S CRITIQUE OF CAUSATION

The Billiard Ball Example

When we see one ball hit another, we only see movements and hear noise. We do not observe "necessary connection" or "cause."

• Constant Conjunction: Seeing two events happen together repeatedly leads to a feeling of expectation.
• Passionate Prejudice: Causal belief is an instinct/emotion, not a rational outcome. This undermines sciences based on explanation.

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PSYCHOLOGY AND RELATIVISM

Object Permanence (Jean Piaget)

Infants do not understand that objects continue to exist when unseen until roughly four months old. This supports Hume's view that basic principles are learned through experience.

Relativism

Argues that reason is socially constructed based on cultural norms, not universal truth. There is no neutral position to judge differing notions of reason.

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KUHN AND PARADIGM SHIFTS

Thomas Kuhn

Kuhn rejects the idea that science is a linear progression toward a single truth.

• Paradigms: Self-contained conceptual frameworks. Science consists of "incommensurable" shifts between different paradigms driven by anomalies that break old frameworks.

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FOUCAULT AND NIETZSCHE

Michel Foucault

• Episteme: A basic unconscious way of seeing the world in a given time period.
• Shift from Teleological to Mechanistic: Aristotle explained events by purpose; post-Enlightenment explains events by causes.

Friedrich Nietzsche's Perspectivism

• God’s eye view vs. Knower's perspective: Knowledge is always an interpretation ltered through particular values and needs.
• Objectivity is Nonsense: To be objective is a "view from nowhere"—an impossibility.
• Despisers of the Body: Rationalists (Plato/Descartes) turn real lived experience into an illusion because they lack the vitality to enjoy the passions of daily life.

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THE IRRATIONAL ANIMAL: DARWIN

Charles Darwin

• On the Origin of Species (1858) & The Descent of Man (1871).
• Humans differ from animals in degree, not in kind.
• Male Aggression: Result of reproductive struggle to protect mates.
• Female Tenderness: Adaptive maternal instinct.

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EVOLUTIONARY PSYCHOLOGY

Assumptions (Cosmides and Tooby)

1. The brain is a physical system governed by laws of chemistry/physics.
2. Skulls house a "Stone Age mind."
3. Consciousness is the tip of the iceberg.

Altruism Paradigms

• Kin Selection (Haldane): Helping relatives preserves shared genes. $1 \text{ death} = 2 \text{ brothers or } 8 \text{ cousins}$.
• Reciprocal Altruism: Helping others on the condition they help you (e.g., Vampire bats sharing blood).

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COGNITIVE BIASES

Conrmation Bias

Tendency to seek evidence that confirms existing theories while ignoring refuting data.

• Wason Selection Task (1966): Testing "If P then Q" (Vowels/Odd numbers). More than 90% get it wrong when abstract; better success in concrete social problems.
• Superstition in Pigeons (B.F. Skinner): Pigeons repeated random behaviors (rituals) because they accidentally coincided with being fed.

Optimism Bias (Tali Sharot)

Brains selectively forget negative probabilities. People update beliefs if the real chance of disaster is better than estimated, but ignore info if the reality is worse.

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FREUD AND THE UNCONSCIOUS

The Psyche Model

• Id: Animalistic basic instincts (libido/aggression).
• Super-ego: Internalized social morality/restraint.
• Ego: The conscious mediator; often weak and forced to lie to itself.

Defense Mechanisms (Anna Freud)

• Denial: Rejecting uncomfortable facts.
• Rationalization: Post-hoc self-deceiving justification.
• Repression: Forcing difficult feelings into the unconscious.
• Sublimation: Transforming inappropriate drives into art or science.

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THE BLANK SLATE: EMPIRICISM

John Locke

• Tabula Rasa: Latin for "blank slate." The mind is "white paper" at birth.
• Associationism: Ideas are bundled together through experience (e.g., "Cat" = furry + purrs + sharp claws).

Psychological Behaviorism (John B. Watson)

• "Give me a dozen healthy infants… and I'll train any one at random to become any type of specialist."
• Classical Conditioning: Associate responses (fear) with new stimuli (a rat).

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KANT'S CATEGORIES

Immanuel Kant

Criticizes empiricism by saying sense data on its own is a "blooming buzzing confusion." Experience is an active process requires innate machinery.

• Categories: Organizing tools (Cause/Effect, Substance).
• Time and Space: Basic preconditions for experience. We cannot think of the absence of space.

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IDEOLOGY AND GENDER

Noam Chomsky

• Universal Grammar: Born with a brain system to generate infinite sentences from finite words.

Knowledge as Power (Foucault)

Rationalist descriptions of "illness" or "human nature" are discourses used to confine or control groups.

Feminism (Judith Butler)

Rejects innate gender identity. Butler argues the idea of distinct "male" and "female" biological sexes is a patriarchal means of subordinate control.

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PERSONHOOD

The Biological vs. The Personal

Peter Millican argues being a person is an accidental property, while being a human organism is a physical property. Personhood is identified with the developed functioning brain and consciousness.

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CASE STUDY: KOKO THE GORILLA

Patterson and Gordon's Case

Koko the gorilla:

• Vocab of 1,000+ sign signs.
• Reads her own name.
• Stanford-Binet IQ scores: 85–95.
• Recognizes herself in mirrors (self-aware).
• Grieves, jokes, and uses time-related words ("yesterday"). Conclusion: She has a claim to moral rights; she is a "person."

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THE LEGAL PERSPECTIVE

Corporations as Persons

By statute, "Person" can include firms, labor organizations, and corporations for the purposes of Equal Protection and Due Process.

Conditions of Personhood

• Sufcient Condition: If it exists, it is enough (e.g., Being a woman is sufficient for being human).
• Necessary Condition: Must be present (e.g., Being male is necessary for being a monk, but not every male is a monk).

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CONSCIOUSNESS

Thomas Nagel

Consciousness is a "subjective character of experience." Fundamental rule: an organism is conscious if and only if there is something it is like to be that organism.

Potential Consciousness

This raises questions about embryos and coma patients. If a sleeper is a person despite being unconscious, it is because of the potential return of consciousness.

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ROCHAT'S LEVELS OF SELF-AWARENESS

• Level 1 (Birth): Sense body as differentiated.
• Level 2 (2 months): Body in relation to environment.
• Level 3 (18 months): The Mirror Test; refers to specular image as representing own body.
• Level 4 (3 years): Trancending the "now"; grasping enduring self through time.
• Level 5 (4-5 years): Imagining what others think of them.

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AGENCY

Freedom of the Will

Agency is the ability to cause one's own actions intentionally.

• Harry G. Frankfurt: Humans are unique because they have Second-Order Desires (wanting to want something different).
• Wanton: Someone who does not care about their will (young children, non-human animals).

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MORAL RESPONSIBILITY

Criterion of Maturity

Legally, children are not fully responsible until the Age of Criminal Responsibility (worldwide median age is 12). If personhood requires full moral responsibility, it becomes a very exclusive club.

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AUTHENTICITY (EXISTENTIALISM)

Individual Choice

• Søren Kierkegaard: Authentic life is filled with "fear and trembling" because we must make unpopular choices.
• Martin Heidegger: Most live in "average everydayness," doing "what one does" (das Man).
• Bad Faith/Facticity: Denying one’s own freedom to conform.
• Project: A main concern or style for one's life.

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ANTHROPOCENTRISM

• Aristotle: Hierarchy where humans are at top because they are rational/political.
• Judeo-Christianity: Humans made in God's image; granted dominion over fish, birds, and livestock (Genesis 1:26).

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BENTHAM AND SINGER

Jeremy Bentham

Shift from "Can they reason?" to "Can they suer?" Total population of sentient beings should be considered in utilitarian happiness calculus.

Peter Singer

• Speciesism: Mistaken prejudice limiting moral concern to one’s own species.
• Preference Utilitarianism: Satisfaction of interests; sentience is the core of having an interest.

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THE OPPOSITION TO ANIMAL RIGHTS

Roger Scruton

Rights usually apply to those with obligations. Animals cannot have obligations (e.g., refrain from stealing), so having a "right" to property is nonsense. Interspecies status is an inter-personal relation based on dialogue.

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AI AND MACHINES

The Turing Test (1950)

Alan Turing replaced "Can machines think?" with the Imitation Game. A machine "thinks" if an interrogator cannot distinguish its typed answers from a human's.

John Searle's Chinese Room (1980)

Criticism of "Strong AI." A man following English rules to output Chinese characters doesn't understand Chinese. He is just manipulating symbols (syntax vs. semantics).

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FUNCTIONALISM (DENNETT)

• Dennett: The mind is like software; realizations can occur on different systems.
• Multiple Drafts: No single "Cartesian Theater" in the brain. Consciousness is the accumulation of multiple drafts of sensations and actions.

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THE MIND-BODY PROBLEM

• Dualism: We are two things (mind and body).
• Monism: We are one unified thing.

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ANCIENT INDIAN VIEWS

• Samsara: The cycle of birth, death, and rebirth.
• Atman: The true self, which Hinduism says should master the body's cravings.
• Middle Way (Buddha): Rejection of severe asceticism. For meditation, the body must be at peace.
• Anatta: The "No-Self." The self is a constantly changing stream of consciousness, not a fixed entity.

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ANCIENT GREEK VIEWS

Plato and the Immortal Soul

In Phaedo, Socrates defines death as the separation of soul from body.

1. Recollection Argument: We recognize "Equality" (which doesn't exist perfectly in nature) because the soul saw perfect Forms in a previous life.
2. Anity Argument: Soul is like the divine (unchanging); body is like the mortal (changing).

Aristotle and Hylomorphism

In De Anima, Aristotle says the soul is the form/actuality of a physical body. They cannot be separated, just as you can't separate the dance from the dancer.

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ABRAHAMIC VIEWS

• Resurrection: Jewish and Christian belief that God will restore the body to life.
• Saint Paul: Sown a natural body, raised a spiritual body.
• Jalal ad-Din Rumi: Sufi mystic; dying to selshness allows the mind to transcend bodily limits and connect to the divine.

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CARTESIAN DUALISM

• Radical Doubt: Descartes doubted everything, including the body, to find the foundational certainty: "I think, therefore I am."
• Interactionism: Mind and body are separate but meet in the pineal gland.
• Gilbert Ryle's Critique: Called it the "Ghost in the Machine" and accused Descartes of a category mistake (looking for a university building when the university is the collection of parts).

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HEGEL'S ABSOLUTE MIND

• Dialectical Method: Thesis $\rightarrow$ Antithesis $\rightarrow$ Synthesis.
• Master-Slave Dialectic: Awareness happens through interaction/dependency. Absolute Mind is realized through the collective totality of human thinking.

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THE HARD PROBLEM OF CONSCIOUSNESS

David Chalmers

• Easy Problems: Explaining behavior and biological functions.
• The Hard Problem: Explaining why physical processes give rise to phenomenal experience (qualia).
• Philosophical Zombies: A being physically identical to a human but with zero internal subjective life. They show that physical facts do not account for consciousness.

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THE SELF AND THE OTHER

• Essentialism: Characteristics exist prior to birth; found through introspection.
• Existentialism: Self is created through action and relations with others.

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THE WESTERN SELF

• Plato's Tripartite Self: Reason, Spirit, Appetite.
• John Locke and Memory: Personal identity consists in consciousness extended backwards into memory (The Prince and the Cobbler example).
• David Hume's Bundle Theory: We are just a bundle of perceptions. The "Self" is a ction we use to tidy up changing perceptions.
• Kant's Transcendental Ego: The "self" isn't a thing you find; it is the unifying principle that weaves perceptions together into a consistent world.

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THE SELF IN EASTERN THOUGHT

• Upanishads: Atman is the "lord of the chariot" (pure consciousness).
• Nagasena's Chariot (Buddhism): A "chariot" is just a practical label for wheels and spokes. Likewise, "I" is just a label for the five aggregates (khandhas).
• Confucianism: Born with "four beginnings" (compassion, righteousness, propriety, wisdom). The self is developed toward perfection through service to family and society.

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THE SOCIAL SELF

• Ubuntu: "I am because we are."
• Jean-Paul Sartre: The "Look" of the Other objectifies us and forces us into self-awareness.
• Multiphrenia (Gergen): The postmodern self is saturated by multiple voices/identities, making a single constant self harder to identify.
• Protean Self: Able to change characteristics in response to circumstances.