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The Great Debate: Being Human


Welcome: Persons and sciences
by David Large

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Over the past few years Caspar and I have held several courses looking at consciousness, darwinism, genes and the mind. Usually we have begun from a base of broadly scientific considerations, moved into discussions of current scientific research and concluded with remarks about humanity and personhood. Today I’d like to reverse that order. I’d like to begin by assuming that we’re talking about real people, with interests and histories, in other words, human beings with unique features both as humans and as individuals.

The reason I’d like to do this is that very often when scientists tackle such things, the science takes centre stage and the human beings, the real people are either sidelined or drop out all together. Today we’ll take a stand for humanity and adopt what I’m going to call ‘the popular stance’. What this means is that we begin by accepting our humanity, our nature, our form, functions and foibles. And from this position we ask science, darwinism, genetics, neurobiology and all the other people-involving studies, ‘what are you going to do about us?’, ‘how are you going to account for the fact of humanity?’ and ‘what does your account leave out?’.

So to begin, what are our assumptions? That there are human beings. That they have a physical reality. This seems indisputable. But also that they have a non-physical reality. Surely this is indisputable too? I think I am here. I feel pleased to see you all. When I consider my physical condition, I believe that everything is more or less all okay. We surely can’t deny the reality of this. Oh yes? Then how come there is so much doubt and scepticism about the non-physical, the psychological, the mental world we all inhabit and enjoy? Let us consider this question, if no others, today. Let us leave feeling secure about our non-physical selves, or persuaded either that it does not exist (physicalism) or that it is utterly irrelevant (epiphenomenalism).

As you may imagine, this will involve a certain amount of scrutiny and investigation. This activity may be characterised as ‘philosophical’ study. This activity has been undertaken by many thinkers, philosophers and scientists over hundreds and thousands of years. Unlike some previous sessions I have no intention of going through the history of this exploration. Today, I want us to start with ourselves and ask what we are, what we need to explain, and what answers are required. Once we’ve done that we’ll see what sort of answers are available, whether any of this work has been done for us already, and how much remains to be done.

Before we start, however, I would like to give you a flavour of what has happened before. (We’re not the first people to think about these things!) In considering human beings, their conscious awareness, darwinian heritage, genetic make up and mindedness, there are many different approaches and problems raised. These approaches form what I have called the Mind Sciences and anyone taking up ‘the popular stance’ is bound to encounter several of them. While I’m sure to have missed some approaches and apologise for this omission in advance, they include:

  • Cartesian res cogitans and material interaction
  • Davidsonian language-involving conceptual schemes
  • Evolutionary psychology and memism
  • Existentialist engagement with the world and bad faith
  • Freudian relationships between Id, Ego and Superego
  • Foucault-Nietzschean archaeology and genealogy
  • Good old fashioned physical science, biology and genetics
  • Heideggerian becoming being and being becoming
  • Kantian transcendental unity of apperception
  • Midgleyan whole account, non-atomistic, approaches
  • Neo-Fregean conceptual and non-conceptual content
  • Post-modern textual discoursism
  • Psychiatrical family units and their discontents
  • Psychological hard wired nature shaped by nurture
  • Wittgensteinian forms of life taking part in language games

Some Mind Sciences

These mind sciences form theories of human beings based on considerations around what it is to be a thinking, feeling, willing, moral being i.e. around what it is to have a mind. Almost all seek to account for this in a separate way to considering humanity itself. Please note that they are not all what would be considered science in the conventional sense. Many are directly and unashamedly philosophical. What that tells us is something I here leave aside, though you may like to think about it as the day goes on.

The list also shows that rather than there being a single way to account for having a mind, for being human, humanity, the human mind (including consciousness) needs to be explained and accounted for in a number of different ways. It just seems to be that that’s the sort of thing we are. The question then is ‘just what sort of thing are we?’. And that’s what we’re here to discuss.

One final thought before we begin. You know, this shouldn’t surprise us. After all the human body, all that is physical about humanity, requires many different sciences to account for it; biology, genetics, psychology as well as chemistry and physics to name but a few. As with the physical body, so much more so with being a human. In accounting for a feeling individual with a willing, judging mind surely we can’t do it all at once and surely we can’t do it all in just one way? If this is true then we can say confidently that there is no single science of humanity, offering the scientific explanation of what we are. However, as is clear already, in accounting for the humanity of human beings it appears that the key facts elude us and that’s why, here today, we’re going to start with the most important of them – us!

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