Human nature

:For the film, see Human Nature (film).

Metaphysics and ethics

There are a number of perspectives regarding the fundamental nature and substance of humans. These are by no means mutually exclusive, and the following list is by no means exhaustive:

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• Philosophical naturalism (which includes materialism and rationalism) encompasses a set of views that humans are purely natural phenomena; sophisticated animals that evolved to our present state through natural mechanisms such as evolution. Good and evil are regarded as labels placed on how well individual behaviour conforms to societal expectations, and is the result of our psychology and socialization.
• Abrahamic religion holds that a human is a spiritual being which was deliberately created in the image of God, and exists in continued relationship with the God. Good and evil are defined in terms of how well human beings conform to God or God's law.
• Polytheistic or Animistic notions vary, but generally regard human beings as citizens in a world populated by other intelligent spiritual or mythological beings, such as Gods, Demons, Ghosts, etc. In these cases, human evil is often regarded as the result of supernatural influences or mischief (although may have many other causes as well).
• Holistic, Pantheistic, and Panentheistic spiritual traditions regard humanity as existing within God or as a part of Divine cosmos. In this case, human "evil" is usually regarded as the result of ignorance of this universal Divine nature. Traditions of this kind include Vedic religions and other forms of eastern philosophy (including Buddhism and Taoism), and western philosophy such as Stoicism, Neoplatonism, or Spinoza's pantheistic cosmology. Certain kinds of Polytheism, Animism, and Monism have similar interpretions.

Free will and determinism

The issue of free will and determinism underlies much of the debate about human nature. Free will, or agency, refers to the ability of humans to make genuinely free choices (in some sense). As it relates to humans, the thesis of determinism implies that human choices are fully caused by internal and external forces.

Related Topics:
Free will - Determinism

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• Incompatibilism holds that determinism and free will are contradictory (i.e. both cannot be true). Incompatibilist views can either deny or accept will.
• Incompatibilist views holding to free will include:
• Libertarianism holds that the human perception of free choice in action is genuine, rather than seemingly genuine, so that some of our actions are performed without there being any compulsion by internal or external forces to do so (i.e., indeterminism).
• Thomism holds that humans have a genuine experience of free will, and this experience of free will is evidence of a soul that transcends the mere physical components of the system.
• Incompatibilist views that deny free will include:
• Fatalism refers to the belief that humans do not have freedom, but rather that our decisions stem from environmental, biological, or theological factors, that the appearance of free will is an illusion, and that human deliberation and actions are pointless because things have to be the way they have to be.
• Predestination is the position that God orchestrates all the events in the universe, human and otherwise, according to his will; in essence a theistic form of fatalism.
• Biological determinism and Social determinism are the views that human actions are determined by their biology and social interaction, respectively. The debate between these two positions is known as Nature vs. nurture.
• Compatibilism is the view that free will and determinism coexist. Compatibilist views include:
• Humian compatibilitism is the view that they are compatible because free will is merely the hypothetical ability to choose differently if one were differently disposed according to the physical factors of determinism.
• Molinism is the view that God is able to pre-destine all events on Earth because he knows in advance what people will freely choose.
• Contemporary compatibilists seek definitions of free will that permit determinism.

Spiritual vs. natural

Another often-discussed aspect of human nature is the existence and relationship of the physical body with a spirit or soul that transcends the human's physical attributes, as well as the existence of any transcendent purpose. In this area, there are three dominant views:

Related Topics:
Spirit - Soul

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• The philosophical naturalist position is that humans are entirely natural, with no spiritual component or transcendent purpose. Subsets of the naturalist view include the materialist and physicalist positions, which hold that humans are entirely physical. However, some naturalists are also dualists about mind and body. Naturalism, combined with the natural and social sciences, views humans as the unplanned product of evolution, which operated in part by natural selection on random mutations. Philosophical naturalists do not believe in a supernatural afterlife. While philosophical naturalism is often assailed as a unacceptable view of human nature, it is endorsed by many prominent philosophers and thinkers. The philosophical naturalist often will view religious belief as similar to superstition and as the product of unsound or magical thinking.
• In contrast to materialism, there is the Platonic or idealist position. It can be expressed in many ways, but in essence it is the view that there is a distinction between appearance and reality, and that the world we see around us is simply a reflection of some higher, divine existence, of which the human (and perhaps also the animal) soul, spirit, or mind may be part. In his Republic, Book VII, Plato represents humankind as prisoners chained from birth inside an underground cave, unable to move their heads, and therefore able to see only the shadows on the walls created by a fire outside the cave, shadows that, in their ignorance, the cave dwellers mistake for reality. For Plato, therefore, the soul is a spirit that uses the body. It is in a non-natural state of union, and longs to be freed from its bodily prison (cf. Republic, X, 611).
• Between materialism and idealism lies Thomism, which is, in essence, a synthesis of Christian theology and the philosophy of Aristotle. The Thomist view of human nature is that we are in essence a "rational animal" -- a single, undivided being that is at once animal and rational. The soul is seen as the entirety of the human being -- no division is made between the "physical" and the "spiritual." As such, the human soul is not a spirit that reluctantly uses the human body as with Platonic idealism, but is instead "the individual substance of a rational nature" -- that is, the soul is the human in his entirety, with both material and rational or spiritual components. This position differentiates Thomism from both materialism and idealism. Unlike idealism, it holds that the visible universe is not a "mere shadow" of a transcendent reality, but instead is fully real in and of itself. However, unlike materialism, thomism holds that empiricism and philosophy, when properly exercised, lead inevitably to reasonable belief in God, the human soul, and moral objectivism. Thus, to a thomist, it is obvious from the evidence that there is a God and an eternal soul.

State of nature

State of nature refers to philosophical assertions regarding the condition of humans before social factors are imposed, thus attempting to describe the "natural essence" of human nature.

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• Views which see humans as inherently good:
• According to John Locke, humans in the state of nature have perfect freedom to order their actions according to the laws of nature, without having to ask permission to act from any other person. People are of equal value, and treat each other as they would want to be treated. People only leave the state of nature when they consent to take part in a community. http://www.swan.ac.uk/poli/texts/locke/locke01.html
• According to Rousseau, humans in the state of nature are naturally good, and bad habits are the product of corrupting civilization;
• Views which see humans as morally neutral:
• According to Pelagius, humans in the state of nature are not tainted by original sin, but are instead fully capable of choosing good or evil.
• According to social determinism and biological determinism, human behavior is determined by biological and social factors, so they are neither truly to blame for actions generally considered "bad" nor truly credited with actions generally considered "good."
• Views which see humans as inherently bad:
• According to Hobbes, humans in the state of nature are inherently in a "war of all against all," and life in that state is ultimately "nasty, brutish, and short." To Hobbes, this state of nature is remedied by good government.
• According to Original sin, humans in the state of nature are tarnished by the sin of Adam, and can only be redeemed by the grace of God;
• According to Bertrand Russell moral evil or sin is derived from the instincts that have been transmitted to us from our ancestry of beasts of prey. This ancestry originated when certain animals became omnivorous and employed predation (killing and thievery) in order periodically to ingurgitate the flesh as well as the fruit and produce of other once-living things to support metabolism in competiton with other animals for scarce food-animal and food-plant sources in the predatory environment in which we evolved. Thus, the simple fact that we humans must eat other life or else starve, die and rot is the probable primordial origin of contemporary and historical moral evil; i.e., the bad things we do to each other by lying, cheating, slandering, thieving and slaughtering.

Morality

There are a number of views regarding the origin and nature of human morality

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• Moral realism or Moral objectivism holds that moral codes exist outside of human opinion -- that certain things are right or wrong regardless of human opinion on the topic. Objective morality may be seen as stemming from the inherent nature of humanity, divine command, or both.
• Moral relativism holds that moral codes are a function of human values and social structures, and hold no meaning outside social convention.
• Moral absolutism is the view that certain acts are right or wrong regardless of context.
• Moral universalism compromises between moral relativism and moral absolutism and holds that there is, or should be, a common universal core of morality.

Purpose

• Materialism and philosophical naturalism hold that there is no external purpose to human life. Proponents of this view often adopt the philosophy of secular humanism.
• Teleology holds that there is inherent purpose to human existence. This purpose may arise from the inherent nature of humanity itself (what a human is "supposed to be," as in the case of objectivist philosophy), from mankind's relationship to the divine (what God wants humanity to be, as in the case of religion), or from both (as when the divine commands are seen as being in accord with the inherent nature of humanity and humanity's best interests)