[Textop-en-phil] "Human being" section

[Larry Sanger]

Again, I do fully intend to respond to Philippe and Clea, but to help move
along the work I'm doing on the wiki, let's talk next a bit about the 'human
beingh section of the outline, here:

http://www.textop.org/wiki/index.php?title=The_Outline#Human_being

This used to be labelled 'human nature'.  In it I have placed Hobbes'
discussions of the distinctive nature of human beings, persons, mental stuff
(philosophy of mind broadly speaking), action (including free will), and
some of the "state of nature" business (i.e., how people are apart from
society, or without a sovereign).

Especially with the heading 'human being', some sense *can* be made of the
decision to group these topics together.  We might specify at least three
broad categories: (1) 'human being' defined or the distinctive
characteristics of humanity, and other concepts essential to or somehow
closely associated with the concept of human beings (such as persons and
personal identity, and the relationship between mind and body); (2) the
origin of ideas and the usual rather dull accounts of the different
faculties and emotions; (3) human action (power, will, free will, and
motives).

These categories seem relatively "obvious" because we can say with relative
ease what relation they have to the broader topic 'human being'.  We say
that (1) concerns the nature, essence, definition, or broadest
characteristics of human beings; (2) concerns the human mind taken by
itself; (3) concerns human action.  The distinction between (2) and (3) is
that between "passions" and "actions" in the early modern sense, or "things
that happen to us" and "things we cause to happen."


Here then are some difficulties:

(a) I have a section lamely labelled 'social psychology'

http://www.textop.org/wiki/index.php?title=The_Outline#Social_psychology

but the point of lumping that stuff together is to pull out elements of (2)
and (3) above that exhibit some sort of social involvement, so to speak.
Hobbes discusses emotions that require another person as object, as well as
the nature of collective action, for example, here:

http://www.textop.org/wiki/index.php?title=The_nature_of_collective_action

The reason I pulled these topics out and grouped them together (which I did
very provisionally) was that it seemed to me the best accounts and
explanations of such "socially involved" matters would depend on more
general accounts of human beings in groups.  Actually, Hobbes does have such
an account, but (remember, this is all still very rough...) I filed it much
further down the list, here:

http://www.textop.org/wiki/index.php?title=The_Outline#Social_groups_and_org
anizations

I'm very open to help in general thinking these matters through.  Maybe I
*shouldn't* pull these topics out under a separate heading, as I have?


(b) Clea makes the excellent and perfectly correct point that the mind as a
topic does not really belong under "human being," simply because animals
have minds, or so many people think.  But this does raise a difficulty.
Suppose I create a 'mind' category and file it provisionally, say, under
'life'.  (When we get more chunks, we'll add more detail: the outline grows
around available chunks, not a priori.)  What part of philosophy of mind
should go there, and what part under 'human being'?  After all, in Hobbes as
in most philosophers, including contemporary philosophers, *most* (not all)
discussions of mind assume we are talking about human minds.  Not
infrequently, a philosopher will switch easily from remarks that could
concern *any* minds, to remarks that could concern only *human* minds (as
far as we know).  In the same way, Leibniz switched easily from the talk of
"simple souls" (monads) to human souls.

What do you recommend on this score?  How should the material be divided up?


(c) Finally, there's the business about the "natural condition of mankind."
Should that continue to be a second-level heading, as I have it now?  The
other option, I think, would be to scatter this material to other
categories.  For instance, the chunk on this page

http://www.textop.org/wiki/index.php?title=Natural_faculties_of_human_beings

would belong under some "human mind" node, higher up.  Hobbes' famous
remarks (and others' remarks on the same question) that human beings are
naturally equal would belong under some node that concerns the natural
variations among human beings.  Finally, the "state of nature is a state of
war" business, and that the state of nature is a fiction, would belong, I
imagine, under "social groups and organization" as comments on *the lack of*
a certain kind of social group.

I'm inclined to do the latter, to spread the "natural condition" section to
the four winds, as described.  What do you think?

--Larry