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I have noticed that from taking part in many political discussions that many people forming ideas about what constitutes proper action and governance based on ideas about human nature and human behavior.

Well i want to have a discussion in this thread about both.

Don't know what I'm talking about? Here are some questions to get the cogs moving.

-What is a person?
-Are my actions and motivations the product of my genetic makeup or my social awakening?(or a little of A and B)
- Can i change who i am or am i determinant?

My opinion:

My thoughts on this center mostly around scientific theory because i believe the scientific method is the best tool for the job; since it is 100% percent grounded in reality.

When we are born; we are naked, hungry, and vulnerable. A good parent will cloth, feed and protect their child until they reach the point where they can do it themselves. The act of procreation is the cornerstone of life; those that are good at it live on. Those that cannot, due to some deficiency, die. Before our cognitive ability became as it is today. The need for warmth, food, and safety were obstacles that our ancestors overcame through the evolution of emotion (chemicals that trigger receptor sites and reflexes within the brain and body). Love developed to care for the baby, anger developed to protect both the young and ourselves, compassion so that we could survive as a group,.... Our emotions began to multiply and differentiate themselves to a point where the brain evolved a mechanism to control them. This is a critical point in our evolution; the moment of self actualization. We could begin to govern ourselves and not just be slaves to the situation. Before we were little better than ants but after that point we began our next stage of evolution(the one we are in now); the evolution of our social construct.

Long before we could think about such a things, evolution decided that our ancestors could live better as a group than as individuals. When i categorize things as being part of human nature or learned human behavior. I always think about what side of this evolutionary line, I just outlined above, would they fall. If you look at ants they are able to work very well as a group and thrive without any cognitive thought(one of many species) due to the use of pheromones(chemicals that trigger different receptors within the brain and body).BUt it is pretty obvious that we do not coexist this way since no man alive has yet to find a cologne that is guaranteed to get him laid. Since coexisting with others is an inherent and important part of our human nature, but we do not do it through chemicals. How we coexist in order to survive must be determined by a learned behavior.

Good and evil are merely creations of our group dynamic and morality is just how you separate your actions and motivations into each category. It is not evil to be angry but it is evil to kill out of anger. This is an important distinction within our society and outlines clearly our ability to cognitively choose to act upon our emotions; one is nature the other the behavior. One is accepted and empathetical the other is rejected and not tolerated in society. People can understand anger since it is an emotion and to feel emotion is in our nature. To choose to act on the emotion and what action to take are a product a our social awakening(the behaviors we learn in order to exist within our group dynamic) and represent who we are as cognitive individual.

Well this is just to get the ball rolling but i look forward to other thoughts on the subject.

Is man properly good or properly evil and can man ultimately improve himself

Answering your first paragraph is difficult because I want to be kind so I will simply ask on what basis you make any of these claims about emotion being a product of evolution or self actualization for that matter. You start your entire argument off well by stating your presupposition which had you stopped there it would have been a fine statement that the only way to know is through the five senses and hence you would deny the very existence of the noumenal realm or anything beyond those five senses. You however have absolutely no evidence for any of the grand statements you made in the first paragraph. If you want to understand the science per say of emotion and such separate from any grand and unsupportable meta-narratives then read Principles of Psychology by William James, a completely scientific approach and one of the original books on psychology. This encourages me to satrt a topic on Macro-Evolution

In your next paragraph you actually support the idea of intelligent design by giving the process of macro-evolution a brain by the statement “evolution decided that our ancestors could live better as a group than as individuals.” Evolution cannot decide and the very fact that you would attest a decision to a blind act of chance is telling. I suggest reading Michael Behe and his theory on irreducible complexity.

In your third paragraph you state that it is acceptable to be angry because that is natural and that to kill out of anger is not acceptable but by your own views and beliefs that statement is false. If there is no higher power no absolute truth and we are simply an effect of Macro-Evolution which is simply natural selection , then why is it not natural to kill out of anger. In reality there is nothing unnatural about killing for any reason because well we are only nature, and there is nothing beyond us there is no noumenal realm by which we measure right and wrong therefore nothing is wrong. You of course could argue which you didn’t that murder is wrong because it hurts society but you would have an impossible time proving that either since there can be no absolutes. You could argue the most good for the most amount of people in which case you can make some statements of moral absolutism but you would be stuck in a vicious circle deciding what is best.

I am sorry if my tone has been at all rough I have tried to be kind and hope that if I have offended you, that you will let me know as I believe you are more than the sum eons of biological mistakes and that you are indeed the very image of God and as such valuable.

If we are discussing human nature and human behavior I think the place to start is the French revolution which is a clear and powerful snapshot of this discussion and if you openly study this event you will see that the travesties of that time came about because of a flawed view of man.

I wrote alot more but it got cut off and lost oh well lol

i don't think you understand what i was saying, maybe you should read "The Evolution of Morality" by Richard Joyce or Conceptual foundations of evolutionary psychology by D. M. Buss.

But i left my opinion vague in order to get a response...,

i'll clarify:

First off i based my ideas off of things I have read by evolutionary biologists and evolutionary psychologists. Yeas i do believe the only way to know truth is through the five senses but i do not deny the existence of a noumenon realm; but our definitions of it are probably different.

By saying that "evolution decided"(i'm kind of a sarcastic person) i meant that a series events through the process of evolution brought about our communal lifestyle since it was a favorable trait to survive in our natural world. I do not support the theory of intelligent design.

Your last paragraph clearly showed that you don't understand what i was really saying. This is probably my fault. It is not acceptable to kill out of anger because society says it is not. Society developed this idea through our social evolution. Because in order to better survive as a group, people couldn't go around killing someone when ever they felt like it. Yes killing is natural but when we stopped being slaves to emotions and our brains gained the capacity to choose between different behaviors when confronted with the emotion (anger); we stopped being as ants and became creators(I think this is from Nietzsche). All morality is an extension of what is proper action for the betterment of the group. You might not think it but i have read Kant, Mill , Plato... i know what your talking about. What ever is best for my community; is morally good and what is not; is morally bad; this is what i believe. It is given its value through the social contract we all share. And is made possible by our Nature(pre self actualization). I believe what makes the individual is the ability to cognitively choose between behavior and what we have in common (apart from the anatomical) is the ability to emote and think. The common characteristics such as the ability to emote are pre society and are shared by all. The search for human nature takes away what makes the individual and searches for what is common in all of us. Therefore in my point of view human nature consists of the anatomical, emotional, and cognition. But what makes us an individual are the behaviors we cognitively choose.

I have read this and I will be answering soon I just need to get some reading in since I want to have my quotes correct. It might seem strange that I am taking such time on this subject but because of the amount of info on the subject I need a refresher course in the old philosophers lol

In time though m8 I promise

20% Genetics 80% education.I remembering a theoretical experiment that asked whether a homicidal maniac would be the same if would reincarnate...the answer is yes...

I most likely wont be making a good effort in a post for a while. However.


we must remember here...do good and evil REALLY exist? If so...why? How? Society? Religion? History? Science? Does it dictate? Free Will...determinism?

An extension of Thrillers questions, but I will be reading (I have to, its my job..lol) So want to see what people make of these wonderful spanners!

What is a person?

Legally, a person is a fictional entity. Many humans HAVE a person, but no human IS a person. The difference is quite important when it comes to the enforcement of statutes. A government is also a fictional entity and it can therefore only act towards a person, which acts as an agent that allows us human beings to interact with the government.

I thought I'd make that clear. Y'all have a nice day.

I think language is important to the development of people, from an early age most people actively think in the language of there homeland, and are bound mentally by its restrictions and prejudices. In early humanity, where language was still crude and inefficient, people would have struggled to think creatively and it would have taken an act of genius just to do what we take for granted, people from a certain amazon tribe have no words for any number above two, and amazingly they struggle to identify the difference between a pattern of 4 objects and a pattern of 5...

If I had the time I'd post links to the twin studies that have been conducted where twins are separated at birth and live hundreds of miles apart. Later on when meeting each other for the first time they often discover they have surprising similarities including occupation. So Nature is heavily involved in who and what we are. I'd get into more but time is limited. Enjoy.

Agapooka wrote:

What is a person?

Legally, a person is a fictional entity. Many humans HAVE a person, but no human IS a person. The difference is quite important when it comes to the enforcement of statutes. A government is also a fictional entity and it can therefore only act towards a person, which acts as an agent that allows us human beings to interact with the government.

I thought I'd make that clear. Y'all have a nice day.

Person, in the context of what you wrote, means the same thing. One is just the adjective the other the noun.

They're both nouns. I honestly have no idea how you came to that conclusion. The legal sense of the word is that of a fictional entity, whereas the common sense of the word is that of a biological entity.

Capice?

sorry your right their both noun's which doesn't make much sense to me because when i write the sentence

Daniel is a person.

Person is qualitative to Daniel.

But it has been a long time since i took an English course.

The term "person" was derived by the early church. Theological concept of the person as something that has a specific identity and holds the fullness of being.

Comprens ?

Your arguments over what a person truely can be defined as divulge from the point mildly...

Human Nature is not within itself the nature of a human, I would suggest we displace the theory of a human nature for a minute, And Add a different Word, Human Desire.

Human Desire is what ultimately makes all humans what they are on the lowest of low levels. We Eat, We Sleep, We Deficate, We Procreate, We desire these four things for these are the norm, The understandable, and it is what we all do. That is all we do. Beyond that, Is just random Chaos what a human is. To merely Suggest a human is a law abideing citizen who is good, is human nature, is a radical statement. To get to the bottom of this arguement the norm must be discovered. What is Normality? I'l produce the "Murder and Live" Argument. Should we allow people who murder to live, or should we kill them for killing someone else? Morale's tell us we have 2 clear choices. But why should a human not be allowed to do what they want? The norm for any human may be haveing the urge to kill potential threats, That could be any other human. Or it could be to help one anouther and live in a community. What is truely the correct way to live? There is NO way to make certain an answer. The very ideal of Laws cause only to take away the idea that all human beings have free will, Because such laws take away there free will to do certain things.

In Sumation to that part of what a human being is and what he is made out of, Its simply random events of chaos.

The Idea of a human Counsiousness is what gets my juices flowing however. What is a human? Is it Physical or mental or a mixture of both? if i had my brain, My mind, And my ability to function as a normal member of society, e.g. Etticate, Speech - However i was in a a cows body, would i still be human, or would i be an animal?

The spectrum for disscussion on this arguement is immense, and i fear i have already gone some way off the original path...

buck wrote:Your arguments over what a person truely can be defined as divulge from the point mildly...

The OP asked what a person is.

Agapooka wrote:

buck wrote:Your arguments over what a person truely can be defined as divulge from the point mildly...

The OP asked what a person is.

I wasnt suggesting you where wrong to have that part of the conversation....I was suggesting there is a wider spectrum within...But i got carried away myself...So...