I was pondering . What is a person ? What is a person like? what is a person unlike? what has caused us to be? What can come of a person? What has been said about people? Why are we signigicant to society? I believe these steps are the steps of a Topoi , i was given this project , but after the completion of the project i relized that there are more answer then thoese i have listed for myself so i was wondering if you guys could help me add more information to my Topoi? THANKS
just my half a cent.
what has caused us to be is not answerable by me, im inclined to say that our being is by pure chance and it would be all the same if we werent around (perhaps better eh…) but we’re here already anyway so…
a person is nothing. ah the satrean stance that being is nothingness. we exist and are born as nothing, but we’re always in the process of becoming, thus you shape your being. i also am inclined towards the stance that a person is an embodied consciousness.
we are not things or substances.
everything can come of a person - the possiblities are endless… things might be higly improbable but nothings impossible…
what has been said about people? eh? lots? everyone everywhere talks about people so i dont know what you’re looking for.
i am perhaps depreciative but i dont see how man is of any significance to society. our arrogant presence did more damage to the earth than a trillion generations of dinosaurs would (figuratively speaking). we’re probably dear mother earth’s greatest mistake. BUT we can instead strive to make the world a better place and make our lives the best possible.
Hey Jedi_Pocky Thanks a bunch … did help me more … im still looking guys so dont be shy … thanks again Jedi_Pocky 
— A person is a physical entity that occupies space. A person has a body that will age and eventually decay and become something else. A person possesses a consciousness. Nothing is given him/her. Man does not survive by his instincts as do a lot of animals. It must all be posited. Man is the creature that must create himself, as Nietzsche said man is both “creature and creator”, Observer and observed.
— A person must see himself as a single entity both physically and logically, this engenders integrity. A person has to have values, sometimes those values conflict.
The mind is a tool to understand others: there feelings, drives, needs and goal. We stand as ego conscious beings, interacting, interpretating and understanding the thoughts of ourselves and others the best a person can. Aperson is everything you believe it to be.
The concept of person, and the concept of human being, are not the same. A human being is a biological entity defined in terms of his DNA. A person is a social, legal, and moral entity. So, we can conceive of persons who are not human beings, for instance Mr. Spock of Star Wars who was only partly human. And an extra-terrestial alien might be a person, but not a human being. A person interacts socially, has rights and obligations, both moral and social, and can be morally responsible for what he does or does not do. There are human beings who are not persons. An infant is not yet a person, but is a human being. A very feeble-minded human being is not a person. And Alzheimer’s patients in their last stages, are no longer persons, but are human beings.
John Locke, in his Essay on Human Understanding (the section on Personal Identity) made this distinction between human beings (biological entities) and Persons whom he called “forensic” entities.
— Which brings to mind the many different roles a person plays: socially, morally, economically, legally, domestically, etc.
All that science, combined with my own observation and logic, have made me think is that a person is just another combination of infinitely small things that are constantly swapping around, but in such a way that is distorted to each human’s perception because of the way we have evolved to sense each other. We don’t see the smaller components that make everything up swapping around, we see the illusion that everything is much more constant and that everything is discrete and separable. We’re as insignificant as a combination at one point in time that appears to us to be a stone.
But for all I know, I might just be a consiousness in a dream-like state, but with logic, making up everything that I tell myself that I sense when its not really there, this consciousness that tells me that I’m a body sensing things
Or any number or possible things… 
We had a discussion similiar to that in our components vs. unity thread. A very convenient error, seeing ourselves as a unit.
I just think that essentialism is pragmatically very useful, but fundamentally, very off-putting. I know that the way we think and sense things can be the only place we can start from in order to find understanding, but one needs to understand that we need to find an understanding beyond what we sense and think ourselves, in order to find truth. We sense and think the way we do, coz thats where our evolution has taken us and what darwinism says is the best way to perceive things for survival. But we need to get around that somehow and perceive things as they are in order to get further in a quest for true understanding.
It is easier to perceive the world as one, our multi-faceted bodies as one individual, a necessary first step to the recognition of the more complex inter-related entities that comprise our reality; and yet there is a sense in which viewing the universe as one, and distant events as related becomes useful, i think a few religious people have seen this perspective.
recognition of the other is perhaps the beginning of ethics, but one must first have recognized oneself.
In the final analysis i don’t believe evolution can be circumvented, it does not require us to be conscious of it to function, but perhaps we can begin to understand the effect it has on us and strive for true understanding as you say.
I’d say it is easier to see the world as components. After all, thats how our sight makes us see things. But thats a distorted reality that we have defined as true reality. You don’t have to be religious to see that. I’m not religious at all, I’ve just got past the illusion that what we perceive is the true reality just through logical deduction.
I still realise that our perception to be useful for ethics and breaking things down to smaller discrete entities for easier analysis, but fundamentally its just wrong.
I know evolution doesn’t require us to be the way we are, its just the path its taken that seemed to work best for survival with the mutations that came about. But thats all it is. A survival method. Not an ultimate omni-perception that comes as standard to any animal.
I think I’m just saying the same thing and u already agree, but I’m repeating it anyway because I think its really important.
— exactly, although i must clarify one point. I am an atheist, i do not believe in life after death, and although i study all of the World’s religions, i espouse none of them. I believe that people have to take responsiblity for themselves, but all of this in no way precludes me from being spiritual, from knowing that what i do will affect others. In fact seeing the universe (or World in this case) as one may even be more important in today’s global interdependent society.