Posts Tagged ‘human nature’

Human beings: Self-creators, self-shapers, or determined?

The culture war rages over the nature of human persons. Questions concerning when a fetus becomes a person, when or whether a computer can attain something like consciousness, or the nature of human marriage and family daily make headlines. In this post, I want to consider, in broad outline, three views about human nature, argue for one of the three, and consider the implications of that view.[1]

What Is This Thinking Thing That I Am? Four Questions

In searching for a foundation from which to secure knowledge, the Enlightenment thinker Rene Descartes stumbled onto what he took to be a belief that is undeniable: “I think, therefore I am.” That I exist as the thinking thing I am is as foundational (and obvious) a truth as any. Still, one wonders, what is this thinking thing that I am? In teaching on the nature of man, I’ve found it helpful to keep the following four questions, as Descartes might put it, “clear and distinct.”