What is Your Conception of Man

Kappar

A philosopher that I am most familiar with in this area, Thomas Hobbes, would say that "man is matter" that is man is no different to a table or chair he thinks because things in his brain bump into each other.

He believes that man cannot therefor create thought independently "every thought must first be begotten on an organ of sense" also he says “Imagination is the continuity of an image, after it is removed that image decaying, we call memory; in sleep, we call dreams.” Now this compare thought to other bodily functions “Thinking and feeling are like blinking and kneeling” .

Hobbes also believes that man is selfish and desire driven. He believes that man does nothing unless it is good for himself. This come from his "man is matter" argument if a man is just a table why should i care about it so much.

What do you think of his ideas?

Stark

I agree with man being selfish and desire driven for the most part. Most of what we do is with the aim of getting endorphins - our brain's system reward. Even when we do an act that appears selfless to an outsider, it's usually so we can feel good about ourselves. What makes man a higher animal is that our concious minds allow us to focus on long-term pleasure as well as short-term pleasure so that we're able to do things that cause us pain in the short term but will give us pleasure in the long term.

As for the first argument, I don't think we (mankind) know enough yet about quantum effects on the interactions in the brain to really go into depth on this theory.

GuanYin

Originally posted by Kappar


Hobbes also believes that man is selfish and desire driven. He believes that man does nothing unless it is good for himself. This come from his "man is matter" argument if a man is just a table why should i care about it so much.

What do you think of his ideas?

I'd agree with this to a point. Human morality is driven pretty much by thier community. We only obey the moralities and values of the community because it is detrimental to us not too. John Austin was quoted as saying "Values are guides to action, not properties of things".

We don't have a set of human, family or community values inherent, we have guidelines acquired and learned. Without accepting this, we fool oursleves into thinking "we are better than animals" and we use this argument when looking down on distasteful acts put before us. We think that we have these "moral values" because we are human and thats what makes us human.

In reality, any of our offspring raised in a society where murder, rape, torture and theft was acceptable, would probably have no issue with commiting any of these acts.

If this is accepted as true, then while we are perhaps not quite a table, we are just like any other animal, just with a more sophisticated behavioural pattern.

Kappar

"Values are guides to action, not properties of things".

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Hobbes does theorise on this. He explains all mans actions as motions; Vital and Voluntary. A Vital motion is one that needs no thought like the circulation of blood etc. Then Voluntary requires thought. He says that a motion towards something i.e. you want it implies that then thing is good and fromwards that is you don't want it means that thing is bad. Therefore nothing is inherently Good or Bad it is subjective.

fitz

I'd agree, man is matter.
Man is a very complicated organic machine essentially, and thought may just be things "bumping" in our brains, but the fact that we are self aware means I can't put us in the same category as a table or chair.

That's like saying a computer is made of metal parts, so it's essentially the same as a gold ring.

Yes, in that it's all made of matter, no, in that it's function is something greater than that sum of it's parts.

I'm running with Syke on this one...

Kappar

Yes, in that it's all made of matter, no, in that it's function is something greater than that sum of it's parts.

I would agree with that however Hobbes would argue that self awareness is just a consequence of the arrangement of matter and that is the only thing that separates man form a chair; arrangement. Hobbes was a physicist and mathematician and would not accept that something greater than that sum of it's parts.

Hobbes has another theory about society that I would love to discuss should I open a new thread on it cause I isn't necessarily linked to his conception of man.

GuanYin

Originally posted by Kappar
I would agree with that however Hobbes would argue that self awareness is just a consequence of the arrangement of matter and that is the only thing that separates man form a chair; arrangement. Hobbes was a physicist and mathematician and would not accept that something greater than that sum of it's parts.

A chair is a processed thing made from a living entity: A tree


Comparing Man to a chair is like comparing man to a skeleton.

Comparing man to a tree would be much more acceptable.

They are both matter at the end of the day, but one is a responsive system, the other no longer.

fitz

Yes, new thread, the more discussion the merrier, and it'll allow us to stay on topic here.

I can understand Hobbes' arguement about the self-awareness, but I disagree.

Chairs can't evolve.

Edit: Spot on Syke, I was trying to think of a way to put that...

Beruthiel

Originally posted by syke
In reality, any of our offspring raised in a society where murder, rape, torture and theft was acceptable, would probably have no issue with commiting any of these acts.

If this is accepted as true, then while we are perhaps not quite a table, we are just like any other animal, just with a more sophisticated behavioural pattern.

we are the product and result of a few good men, philosophers, the ones who had the intelligence to lead us and make us think about our surroundings, the ones who taught us the difference between right and wrong

GuanYin

Originally posted by Beruthiel
we are the product and result of a few good men, philosophers, the ones who had the intelligence to lead us and make us think about our surroundings, the ones who taught us the difference between right and wrong

Again, philosophically speaking, this is subjective.

Its a very "chicken and egg" sort of situation, right and wrong can only be defined by people who have been pre-programmed with a certain sense of right and wrong.

Therefore their perception isn't actually based on what *IS* right or wrong, merely what their community dictates.

To many animals, killing competitors and taking mates is perfectly acceptable. Obviously in our communities (although not all human communities) it isn't.

But what would man be like without these imposed moralities? In setting ourselves apart from the animal kingdom we may have actually doomed ourselves. If you think about what we have paid for civillisation, it was't cheap.

We have a spiraling population that will eventually run out of resources, we are destroying our environment for material possessions, we have unleashed illnesses and spread disease across continents.

If we had stayed at the hunter gatherer level we probably wouldn't waste resouces (although even primative man hunted a few species to extinction), tribal wars would never escalate to the stages they have now. Infectious disease would be locally confined epidemics.

Once we left the alpha male scenario and started nurturing our sick and incapabale we may have taken ourselves out of the natural selection process and caused an imbalance in our environement.

m1ke

I agree with some points Hobbes makes, much of what he said is relevant especially in the field of international relations, where the ordering principle of the world is anarchy.

But when it comes to human nature, he tried to isolate and separate the individual from that of society. This is just impossible. If you leave a new born child on its own after birth it will get physically sick for the love of its mother, even if it is recieving all the basics it needs to survive. If the society is good, I believe this feeds back into the individual/family structure and vice versa. Otherwise I agree with a lot of his premises about human nature and the human mind, but he doesn't give the species enough credit, look at the ingenuity alongside the destruction.

Kappar

I agree with some points Hobbes makes, much of what he said is relevant especially in the field of international relations, where the ordering principle of the world is anarchy.

Yes, I would agree with you on this. Hobbes argues that man in a State of Nature would act in a way that would benefit himself mostly he says that if one believes that man would not act like this imagine a state being a person and look at hoe they act.

m1ke

Domestically we're socialised in a sort of hierarchal form rather than an anarchial form. Also internationally the states within the European Union act a lot differently towards eachother than they say do towards dodgy regimes.

I think you can draw from this, some conclusions that states don't always act like Hobbes says, therefore humans mightn't act the same way either.

I believe that the social layers of human nature cannot be removed from the individual and are in some ways genetically encoded. We know how to act around people of the same species from birth. I'd argue we are mostly Hobbesian in nature - but not as solitary, like planetary objects that come into conflict once they're near eachother - as he described it. The missing element: we're not in conflict but in connection with other human beings from birth. To keep to the planetary metaphors - society is like the solar system, we are all in orbit, there is a certain harmony to our ways, but every now and then a freakin big ass comet goes loose in the atmosphere.

Kappar

Also internationally the states within the European Union act a lot differently to wards each other than they say do to wards dodgy regimes.

Perhaps this is because it suits them to do so or that they have no choice because they are living in fear of being targeted.

We know how to act around people of the same species from birth.

Do you mean we are born knowing this or are we 'socialised' into seeing this as how to act. If man was not living in fear of the consequences of not obey the norm would people obey it.

m1ke

I think we are born knowing it to a certain extent although we are also socialised - so it is a combination of both - enlightenment theorists didn't have the wealth of social-biological/genetic evidence to fall back on here. Sorry no example to highlight this comes to mind.

Perhaps this is because it suits them to do so or that they have no choice because they are living in fear of being targeted.

Alternatively it could be because we're a species that can actually become interdependent on one another. Instead of producing everything we need for ourselves - people depend on me for fixing their internet connections and I depend on other people to make bread for me and put the figs inside the fig roles. Following from this, the EU could be a representation of a more complex interdependence.