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Theory Construction. Human Nature What is the nature of human beings? What makes them act the way they do? What goes wrong? (How do you explain dysfunction?) What motivates a person to change?. View of Human Nature. Are people basically “good”? Or are their natures essentially “evil”?
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Theory Construction Human Nature What is the nature of human beings? What makes them act the way they do? What goes wrong? (How do you explain dysfunction?) What motivates a person to change?
View of Human Nature • Are people basically “good”? • Or are their natures essentially “evil”? • Or is it something in between?
Free Will Vs. Determinism • Do people have free will? • How does choice arrive in behavior?
View of Human Nature • How is behavior determined? • Is Human behavior determined by: • Genetics (or material cause)? • Environment (external/efficient cause)? • Innate Patterns of behavior? • Movement toward some purpose?
Determinism • Hard Determinism: The universe is like clocks, what occurs in the world or in behavior is precisely what must have occurred. • Soft Determinism: A belief that things could have gone otherwise than they did.
Noumena: What something is in itself, independent of our sensations of it. Phenomena: Our sensory knowledge of things or actions in the external world. The human mind, through its categories of understanding, frames-in themeaning of the noumenal world for us. Human Experience according to Kant (1724-1804)
The phenomenological method(Kant) • Studying our very existence as conscious, meaning-creating beings. • Human beings can reflexively study their own mind as a process. “If humans have machine properties, then unlike other machines in nature, they can turn back on themselves and observe their own parts and processes at work.” • Transcendental: Describes when we go beyond the usual flow of our thoughts and see things as they happen from the vantage point of an observer outside this flow (of our thoughts).