Today we started our discussion by addressing the topic of Philosophy and Human Nature. First, I am defining philosophy as a “mind set” or way of looking at our existence that we form in our mind. When I say “our existence” I mean that to encompass all of our issues including what makes us “human” and how we approach our interactions with other people. (It is important to acknowledge that I am not trained as a philosopher so I may use terminology that may be incorrect and that will need to be edited later.)

So, if we take the term philosophy to refer to an activity of the rational mind that is brought to bare on any given question or issue, that leads to a specific “mind set”,  we are exerting the primacy of the rational mind over our animal nature as discussed earlier. (Animal nature as what is instinctual or innately programed through evolution or genetics.)

This leads back to the question “To what degree can we use the rational mind to control our animal nature?”  Is it delusional to believe that we are controlling our behavior? What kind of test or experiment can we perform to check our free will?