Grade 11

INTRODUCTION TO THE
PHILOSOPHY OF THE HUMAN PERSON
HIGH SCHOOL AND VALUES EDUCATION

HANDOUT 4 - THE HUMAN PERSON AS A SEEKER

OF THE TRUTH AND THE GOOD
OVERVIEW:
Introduction
I. The human intellect: the power to know
II. The human will: the power to do and to choose
III. The human emotions: interactions with our intellect and will
IV. Truth: one of Miriam College’s core values
V. Insights

Key concepts:
Intellect, will, emotions, simple apprehension, judgement, reasoning
Knowledge, truth, beliefs, justification, correspondence, coherence,
pragmatic

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INTRODUCTION

Like all animals, the human person also possesses a brain. But he or she has a mind
or intellect; and is intrinsically equipped with a capability to think or to know.
Through the body, humans possess nine senses. Five of these are known as
external senses, which are sight (vision), taste, smell, hearing, and touch. And four
of these are known as internal senses, which are memory, imagination,
consciousness, and instinct. However, we’ve learned that senses are not all which
the human person acquires. Aside from the bodily powers, humans have spiritual
powers which are found in the human mind or intellect and human will.

I. THE HUMAN INTELLECT: THE POWER TO KNOW

A. Operations of the Intellect

The knowing power or faculty of humans is the mind or the intellect. Most thinkers
agree that the intellect (“nous”, in Greek) is one of the powers of the soul. Thus,
one way to understand human persons is to regard her/him as possessing a
spiritual power, a knowing capacity. But how does our intellect work? There are
three basic operations of the human mind: apprehension, judgment, and
inference. These operations, however, may seem very distinct and separated as
we discuss these, but in reality, they almost happen simultaneously.

1. Simple Apprehension – To apprehend is to take hold of a thing as if with the

hand; an apprehension, as an act of the mind, is an intellectual grasping of an
object. The mind cannot take an object physically into itself; but it knows an
object by taking it in intellectually, in a manner suited to its own nature; forming
to itself an intellectual image. The act of forming this mental image is called a
conception, and the fruit of it, the image itself, is the concept, idea or notion of
the object. The word ‘simple’ emphasizes the fact that the apprehension neither
affirms nor denies the existence of the object; it affirms nothing and denies
nothing, it simply conceives the idea of the object.

2. Judgement – In the second process, the mind appraises, pronounces, or judges

whether the reality is either true or false. For example, if one sees a book and one
judges that it is a box, understandably, the judgment is false. Otherwise, if one
judges it correctly, then, the judgment is true. Further, a judgment can either be
affirmative or negative. An example of an affirmative judgment can be expressed
this way: “It is raining!” And a negative judgment is expressed this way, “It is not
raining!”

3. Inference or reasoning – In the last process, the mind engages in reasoning.

Reasoning is a process whereby the mind arrives at a reasoned or inferred
judgment. Usually, reasoning is done through questions. For example, the

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judgment “It is raining!” can be reasoned out when one starts to postulate a series
of questions like “Why is it raining?”, “Why is it not raining?” or “Why is there rain?”

B. Three Conditions of Knowledge

After familiarizing ourselves with how the intellect works, what does the claim “I
know” mean? By definition, knowledge is the awareness and understanding of
particular aspects of reality. It is the clear, lucid information gained through the
process of reason applied to reality. The traditional approach is that knowledge
requires three necessary and sufficient conditions, so that knowledge can then
be defined as "justified true belief":

1. Beliefs – First, beliefs are in your head and generally are viewed as just the way
you hold the world (or some aspects of the world) to be. A belief, simply, is a
proposition that a person accepts as representing the way the world actually is.
It can also be called as an idea that is based on some assumptions or some
inconclusive evidences. Opinions can be classified as a belief since opinions are
general or personal view on a given subject matter. One can have a belief that
is true or can have a belief that is false.

2. Truth - Now, what is truth? Things by themselves are neither true nor false; they
just are or are not. A chalk is a chalk. A cat is a cat. What makes things true or
false are our judgments and our propositions about them. Truth has to do with the
assertions or claims that we make about things. There are three definitions of truth
based on the three classical theories:

a. Truth is the correspondence of the mind with reality. (Correspondence Theory)

The word “correspondence” means “similarity”. Thus, that which exists in the mind
must be similar (the same) with what is the case in reality for a thing to qualify as
truth. Saint Thomas Aquinas said something related to this. For him, truth is the
conformity of the intellect to reality. For example, for my statement, “there is a
quiz in my philosophy class today (in my mind)” to be true, it must be factual that
there is actually a quiz in the philosophy class today (in reality). But of course, I
wish there is none.

b. Truth is being consistent to other beliefs which are held to be true. (Coherence
Theory)
A coherence theory bases the truth of a belief on the degree to which it coheres
("hangs together") with all the other beliefs in a system of beliefs (typically one
person's beliefs, but it could be any body of knowledge). This theory deals mainly
with statements, as it holds that a statement is true if there is a logical connection
(coherency) between the statement and a previous systematic body of
statements already known to be true. For example, “All women are human”,
“Cheska is a woman”, “so, Cheska is a plant”; the latest statement “Cheska is a

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plant” is an error (not true) as it does not cohere or fit with previous true statements
[women=human and cheska=woman].

c. Truth is what works out in practice or what leads to satisfactory results.

(Pragmatic Theory)
The word “pragmatic” means “treating things from a practical point of view”. This
theory holds that a statement or theory is true if it “works in practice”. Thus, one
must be able to yield practical and beneficial results, in order to make a theory
pass as truth. For example, if I can harvest the energy of lightning to power a city,
and I draw a plan for it; for this to be certified as truth, this idea must be physically
constructed and must actually collect the energy of lightning for all to see. This
theory is inductive (from general to specific) and is scientific in nature.

3. Justification - But truth cannot be the only requirement for a belief to be known,
because we may believe something and what we believe may in fact be the
case, so the belief is, in fact, true, but our believing it is just a matter of, let us say,
a "lucky guess." The person who believes something just as a lucky guess cannot
be said to know that thing. A person should be able to have good reasons and
reliable evidences for believing. It is the aspect of justification –providing solid
evidences to back up a belief, opinion, or claim. A person knows something if
he/she is justified in believing it to be true (and, of course, it, actually, is true).

In summary, the seed of knowledge is belief. To validate our belief, we need to

verify (justify) this by supporting it with available and reliable evidences. Once this
belief passes a thorough assessment and turns out to be certain or true (truth), it
is now regarded as knowledge – a justified true belief. This is the direction of our
intellect, to have knowledge.

II. THE HUMAN WILL: THE POWER TO DO AND TO CHOOSE

A. Rationality is about having a human intellect and having human will

Aristotle describes human persons as rational animals. When we think of rational,
we usually think of it as being intellectual, logical, or reasonable. But rationality
involves the human will and not only the intellect. To differentiate the two, let us
examine their most basic nature or character. The human intellect, as seen in the
previous discussion, is inclined (moves towards) to acquire knowledge which is
actually a collection of truths. The human will, on the other hand, is inclined to
acquire a desired good. The will’s function is to strive for the good that the intellect
presents. The “good” here is seen as a “good for us”. Of course, there is the real
good and the apparent good. But we shall discuss in the next handout.

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B. Knowledge is power but there is also will power.
In other words, when we think (using the human intellect), nothing is practically
done. When we will (using the human will), we do something. For example, it is
true that eating fruits and vegetables is beneficial to the body. Our intellect is able
to grasp that truth from our lessons in school and advice from doctors and parents.
Our will is the one responsible in moving us to actually choose to eat vegetables
and fruits because it is good for us. Thus, we must “will” it. We could say that
athletes have tremendous “will power” because they disciplined their bodies to
eat healthy food and to train rigorously. This topic on human will is to be discussed
further in the next lesson regarding freedom.

III. THE HUMAN EMOTIONS: INTERACTIONS WITH OUR INTELLECT AND OUR WILL

Aside from the intellect and the will, another interesting feature of human
existence is presence of emotions. How can we relate our emotions to our intellect
and our will?

A. Our Emotions and our Intellect

1. Emotions are triggered by thoughts.

Martha Nussbaum, a contemporary philosopher, said that emotions are not
unthinking energies that simply push the person around. Emotions are caused by
one's thoughts. They are both triggered by one's thoughts and programmed by
one's thoughts. The triggering is straightforward to show. Hearing the words, ‘Class
is suspended’, ‘No quiz’, ‘Home Study Day’, or ‘Taylor Swift’, etc., one experiences
an emotion or mixed of it. Hearing the same words in an unknown language or
hearing a name of an unknown person, the words would be meaningless. Thus, in
the words of Saint Thomas Aquinas, emotions are kindled and entertained by a
certain knowledge or form projected into an image causing human beings to be
drawn to it.

2. Emotions are based on beliefs.

After knowing that understanding triggers the emotion, this does not explain the
particular emotion, though. Why do we feel fear when we see a gunman, but we
experience joy when we see a baby walk for the first time? The answer is the same
as why understanding is required to trigger the emotion. The emotion is a response
to our understanding of the situation. Martha Nussbaum said that emotions are
embedded with complex beliefs. For example, fear is based on a belief that one's
life is in danger. Pleasure is experienced when one believes a value has been
achieved. Each emotion is a particular response to a certain kind of judgment.

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3. Emotions are automatic responses to previous judgments.
But, one doesn't need to follow the full chain of thought to the judgment that
causes the emotion. Emotions are automated responses. When one sees the
gunman, the emotion occurs almost immediately after the gunman is seen. This is
because of an automatized judgment: the judgment that life is worth living and
death is to be feared. The gunman triggers this emotion when one realized that
one's life is threatened. The evaluation of whether life is good is not made at that
time. It was made before. Thus, memory plays a role in our emotions.

Since emotions are automatic responses to previous value judgments, it is possible

that the response is not proper. If the original judgment was faulty, the emotion
will be faulty as well. For instance, one may hate a stepfather because one
believes him to be trying to steal one's mother. Later in life, the emotion may still
be triggered when one sees the stepfather, even if one no longer believes the
cause to be true anymore. In the same manner, if the original judgment no longer
applies, neither does the emotion.

On the other hand, it is possible to trigger an emotion out of the original context.
For example, you hate your new classmate because of how she talks. She has this
tiny and pitchy voice that irritates you. It is not, however, her voice that primarily
irritates you. Her tiny and pitchy voice is similar to a particular girl in the past who
gossiped about you during your grade school days. The triggered emotion
corresponds to the original situation but not to the present one.

B. Our Emotions and Our Will

1. Emotions can drive us to do good or not so good deeds

We all experience different kinds of emotions: envy, anger, joy, sadness, fear,
disgust, and Bing bong (just kidding). Emotions can be strong or weak. But, either
way, these emotions are bodily reactions to stimuli. They can disorganize or
confuse a person like being nervous when speaking in public. Somehow, our
emotions have hijacked our ‘selves’. For example, in the midst of a heated
argument with a friend, you shouted at her, and you blurted her secrets in front of
others. After a while, you realized you have hurt her, and you should not have
done that. Sometimes, you ask the question, what came into me? "I just went
bananas. My head just exploded.

Emotions, indeed, can move us in that direction. But these reactions can also
move us in a more positive direction. For example, you got affected seeing a
beggar looking for food in a garbage bin. You felt compassion and you bought
food for that person. Emotions can be considered disturbances in one’s interiority
that indicate harmony or disharmony within the self.

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2. We can rise above our emotions.
It is good to point out that we are not slaves of our emotions. Emotions can
influence our actions and behavior; but emotions do not have the final say on
what we should do. We can be unmotivated, but we can still ‘will’ to do
something. If we feel like punching someone because she did not do her part in
the project, we do not necessarily punch that person (even if we really like doing
it). We can still get hold of ourselves and control that feeling and do something
constructive like moving away for a while from that person and talking to her
when the feeling subsides.

The human being can rise above feelings and motivations. For example,
sometimes we do not want to go to school. We just do not feel like going to
school. But it does not mean that we will not go to school. Most of the time, we
exert effort (will power) to attend school despite the feeling/no feeling. Another
example is a mother or a father who sacrifices herself/himself for a sick child. The
parent might feel tired due to sleepless nights. Yet, the parent stays up late for her
child and cares for her child. She does this out of love. Thus, we can insert here
that love, in the strict sense, is not a feeling, but an act of the will. There is truth to
this saying, if there is a will, there is a way. In Filipino, kung gusto, may paraan,
kung ayaw, maraming dahilan.

IV. TRUTH: ONE OF MIRIAM COLLEGE’S CORE VALUES

Try to look at the logo of our school. We will find the symbol of the CHI-RHO, a
symbol used to indicate the name “Christ” in Greek. It is made up of the Greek
letters chi (X) and rho (p) and was used by the early Christians as a sign of their
solidarity with one another. Below that symbol, we will see the word, VERITAS
which is Latin for TRUTH. Christ said, “I am the Way, the TRUTH, and the life.” We
must incarnate Christ in the world by living the truth – in love.
Miriam College is committed to the values of truth, justice, peace, and the
integrity of creation. Our school has the following statement about truth:

We believe in the power of knowledge and liberating force of truth. We commit

ourselves to the systematic and scientific search for truth and to fairness and
openness in its pursuit. We reject all forms of deceit, falseness, and dishonesty. We
strive for the highest quality of intellectual and academic output at the same time
that we recognize and value the wisdom of heart.

The statement says that our school promotes and values truth because truth frees
us from ignorance (ignorance from the self and from the world). As a community,
we also do not tolerate lying in all of its forms (writing, speech, works) and in all of
its degrees (small or big lies). In the name of truth, we are challenged to give our
best academic/intellectual outputs, as well as, to appreciate the wisdom coming

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not just from the mind but also from the heart.

V. INSIGHTS

A. We have intelligence and will.

Everyone is endowed with natural capacities and abilities. Each person has the
ability to reason (human intellect) and decide freely (human will). The person has
the ability to grasp, recognize and appreciate truth and goodness, and the ability
to choose among options to promote or disregard.

B. Listen to opinions but search for the truth.

Yes, it is good that nowadays we have different ways for self-expression. But truth
must prevail over opinions. Our society is becoming more and more opinion
centered. Posts and comments in social media platforms are sometimes readily
accepted as true without any verification or justification. These posts even go viral
reaching millions of likes and views. Opinions are having the aura of truth as our
sense of what is true is determined by polls and surveys. Sometimes media decides
if abortion is right or wrong by having opinion polls. We need to search for
statements that are based more on objective content rather purely subjective
views.

C. Stop and Think.

Thinking is stoppage of the immediate experience we have and connecting this
experience to other experiences so that a more comprehensive and coherent
plan of activity is formed. Sometimes, when we see posts in social media, we are
eager and quick place our comments. Think first before we click. Thinking is
actually stopping and postponing immediate action. It results to internal control
of our impulses by uniting observation and memory, this union is the heart of
reflection. John Dewey (a proponent of Pragmatism – knowledge is what is useful)
is right in saying that the goal of education is creation of power of self-control.

D. Critically Think.
Critical thinking, then, enables us to form sound beliefs and judgments, and in
doing so, provides us with a basis for a "rational and reasonable" emotional life. If
we are concerned with developing our rationality in order to improve our lives,
we must understand the powerful role that both emotions and thoughts play in
our minds. We must understand the ways in which affect, and cognition influence
one another in determining both our outlook on life and our behavior. We must
take charge of our minds.

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REFERENCES

A. BOOKS
Cenzon, Maria Andrelita, Ph.D. Introduction to Philosophical Anthropology (Provisional Draft Version-
University of Asia and the Pacific), 2008

Miriam College. 2022. MCHS Student Handbook. Loyola Heights, Quezon City.

Moga, Michael D. S.J. The Enduring Questions. Makati City: Saint Pauls Publications, 2005.

B. INTERNET
Coppens, Charles S.J. “JMC: Logic and Mental Philosophy” accessed September 28,
2022. https://www3.nd.edu/~maritain/jmc/etext/lamp01.htm

“Definition of Coherence Theory” accessed September 28, 2022.

https://www.informationphilosopher.com/knowledge/coherence.htm

“Emotions”. accessed September 28, 2022.

http://www.importanceofphilosophy.com/Epistemology_Emotions.html

Aviv, Rachel. “The Philosophers of Feeling” accessed September 28, 2022.

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/07/25/martha-nussbaums-moral-philosophies

“Compiled Notes on Philosophy of the Human Person” accessed September

28,2022. https://sites.google.com/a/corpuzquitan.com/philosophy/

Dewey, John. “Experience and Education” accessed September 28, 2022.

http://ruby.fgcu.edu/courses/ndemers/colloquium/experienceducationdewey.pdf

C. Image
https://philosophymt.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/chariot.webp

Prepared by Jaime L. Villafuerte IV for Grade 11 Senior High School Students of MCHS