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Martin's picture

A Certain Kind of Thing

Much of our discussion seems to be moving in a direction which would suggest that what defines "health" or a "good/normal human specimen" is going to be left up to individual choice. This would mean that an individual human person gets to decide what is good for them and they can say nothing about what is good for their neighbor. 

I may be reading this into our conversation and it is in fact not there at all, but if it is there I feel I need to voice a contrary opinion.

Much of western philosophy/religious studies have focused on the question of "What is a human being?"  This question obviously implies that a human is a certain kind of thing and we DO NOT get to decide what that is; we simply observe humans in varying contexts and try to see patterns. What a human being is will be expressed in what a human being does.  (This refers to the is-ought problem brought up in the Phil Thesis we are reading for today) We may not ever know with certainty what ought is implied in the is, but there certainly is some ought that is implied. A hammer is for banging in nails, that is what what it means to be a hammer. I can use my shoe as a hammer, but that is an abnormal use for my shoe and it does not respect what the shoe is. 

P.S. the Thesis I referred to was quite well written; Kudos to the author! 

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