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Person and Value - an Overview |
CONTENTS
1 INTRODUCTION
2 TRANSCENDENCE AND THE PERSON
3 THE COMPONENTS OF PERSONHOOD
4 THE VALUE OF THE PERSON
5 OBJECTIVE MORAL IMPERATIVES
6 AUTHENTIC PERSONHOOD
7 CONCLUSIONS
7 CONCLUSIONS
This essay is a sketch covering a wide range of some of the most difficult issues in philosophy. It is intended as an overview of more detailed arguments to be presented elsewhere, which indicates how the arguments might ultimately fit together in a coherent whole. The overview also begins to map out the extensive requirements for further conceptual analysis before we can begin to make sense of our experiences of the factual and valuational aspects of personhood.Starting from the assertion that the world is entirely natural (that is, it lacks any supernatural, mind-like components in its fundamental make-up), the following picture of human persons and their place in this world emerges from the lines of argument developed in this essay.
- In spite of naturalism, the person is not to
be identified with the physical body or brain; persons are emergent
objects, ontologically dependent on but not identical with the human
animal.
- As such, persons are alien in the natural world;
the underlying dynamic of persons is that of final causation, as opposed
to the efficient causation which is the only grounds for explanation
in the natural world.
- Persons are the primary source of value.
- There exist objective moral imperatives, binding on all persons; they are an emergent feature of the multiplicity of subjective value-sources (that is, persons).
To make this vision of person and value work, the whole idea of an ontology
of emergence has to be made plausible. This enterprise is attempted in
the essay "Emergence and Transcendence".
Click here to go back to the start of the essay
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| © Ian Dunbar 2001, All Rights Reserved |
| Last updated 25 August 2001 |