Human Nature: Reason, Language, and Morality
Human Nature: Reason, Language and Morality
Man is the only rational being capable of making decisions for itself and not be swayed by instincts.
- Logos: Reason and words (thinking in words).
- Ethology: Science that studies the behavior of animals in their natural state.
Human Language vs. Animal Communication
Human Language: We possess words (logos), which serve not only to refer to concrete actions, but also to abstract ideas of all kinds, such as justice, beauty, or liberty. Human language is an open, articulate, flexible, and potentially infinite system of signs, a tool not only to communicate but to express any idea or thought.
Animal Language: Animals have voice (phone), that is, they use sounds to distinguish pleasure, to signal pain, or an imminent danger. Animals possess communication systems, but these are innate codes of signals, limited and invariant, designed to meet specific needs, and incomparable with human language.
Morality: Understanding Right and Wrong
- Amoral: Not moral.
- Immoral: Has morals but misuses them.
- Moral: A set of beliefs and norms of a particular social group or person that acts as a guide to action (guiding us about good or evil, right and wrong).
Intelligence and the Human Psyche
Psyche = Rationality. What does it mean to be intelligent? To be intelligent means to know how to live well, that is, to be able to cope successfully with different situations and challenges that life presents us.
- Thanatos (aggressive instincts or death instincts) is responsible for violent behavior.
Optimism vs. Pessimism in Human Nature
- Excessive Optimism: Man is good by nature, and the origin of all his evils is social.
- Fatalistic Pessimism: According to human nature, all possible defects and vices are present. It has serious difficulty explaining behaviors such as love, heroism, or any other form of altruism (when you do something without asking for anything in return).
- Gregariousness: Tendency to gather in groups to identify and act according to the majority.
Defining Man: Complexity and Substance
How do we define man? He cannot be defined. That is our characteristic: Complexity.
Substance: In the language of philosophy, that which has real independent existence, that needs nothing else to be.
Mind-Body Relationship: Dualism and Monism
Dualism: Relationship between soul and body (existence of a soul and a body).
- Orphism: Humans are made up of an intangible, immortal soul that accidentally joins a material and mortal body. The soul is polluted, and when the body dies, it is reincarnated to purify itself.
- Accidental Union Between Body and Soul: These two realities of opposite nature can never fully marry. The body tends towards comfort and pleasure, while the soul aspires to knowledge and reason, and fights for the truth.
- Qualified Union – Body-Soul Close Union: The relationship between spirit and body is joined in an intimate way. One and the other are strongly united and mutually influence each other. Each substance is what it is by itself and regardless of the other.
Monistic Perspectives: Materialism and Idealism
- Materialist Monism: What we call spirit or soul is simply the product of our brain activity. Our entire psychic life can be reduced to a complex network of physical processes.
- Idealism or Mentalism: What we call matter, body, or an existence independent of mind does not exist, except in or for a mind.
Artificial Intelligence and Reductionist Positions
Artificial Intelligence: Studying the possibility of creating computers or thinking machines that mimic human mental activity.
Reductionist Positions:
- Reductionist Materialism: Negates the existence of the mind and its phenomena.
- Behaviorism: No separate realities, brain and mind, but a single one that integrates many physical, psychic, and behavioral aspects.
- Functionalism: Negates that the mind is a thing or substance, reducing it to a function or set of functions that our brain carries out.
Difference Between Mind and Brain
- Brain: An organ of the body where the entire central nervous system process occurs. It contains billions of neurons, is a mass within a cranial cavity, and has a measurable area and weight, and can be touched.
- Mind: It has no size limit, no weight or area. The mind is infinite; it is the essence of who you are and cannot be touched.
Emergentism and the Three Worlds Theory
Emergentism: The doctrine that consciousness emerges from matter.
Theory of Three Worlds: Physical phenomena belong to a level of reality called World 1, while mental phenomena that arise from World 1 constitute World 2.