Human nature matters

> A prominent example is our colleague Jesse Prinz at the City University of New York, who argues forcefully for what is referred to as a ‘nurturist’ (as opposed to a ‘naturist’) position in his book Beyond Human Nature: How Culture and Experience Shape the Human Mind

I've read a bunch of books on prehistory, one thing that always stood out to me as very telling is that for a long time, homo sapiens were just like all the other humans on the planet. Reasonably smart, we had tools, rudimentary language and brains equipped to maintain reasonably stable social contacts on a small scale.

Then 70k years ago things suddenly changed, sapiens left Africa and rapidly spread to the other continents. There's not much evidence of actual warfare, but the arrival of sapiens in all cases coincided with the extinction of other humans and mega fauna.

The author of "Sapiens" argues that this happened because of sapiens' massively increased ability to cooperate. When and why did this happen 70k years ago? Because, so argues "Sapiens", a sudden mutation (or gradual crossing of a certain threshold) enabled our ancestors to construct 'culture'. Our increased mastery of language and our evolved social modules allowed a more robust societal framework to come into existence. Enabling rapid buildup and accumulation of technology and tradition. And that was ultimately what made us 'different' from the other humans on the planet.

I found it a very compelling argument (even though, ultimately, it's only a thought experiment). Maybe we do inherit a 'spray-painted wall of human nature'. But our culture and history seem to fill a function too.

Many analyticists might have a generally deflationary view of human nature, but outright skepticism towards it is not dominant.

Even Locke, who the authors mention for his tabula rasa, thought that children were born rational and had to be reasoned with (instead of trained or dictated to, as Rousseau suggests in Emile).

[1]: These being not dissimilar to Aristotle's claim that reasoning is man's function, and that man's virtue is reasoning well.

Antique philosophy, at least what survived to nowadays, seems much more down-to-earth than today's popular thinkers.

I just don't understand why anyone should care what 'existentialists' think, or John Locke, or anybody else.

There is a goal, and there are strategies with various pros/cons for achieving that goal. Differences in opinion spring from having different goals, and/or disagreeing about the ways to get there.

What is talking endlessly about other people's opinions accomplishing? Is it about creating a 'robust philosophy'? Throws up in his mouth

"Human nature is best conceived of as a cluster of homeostatic properties, ie of traits that are dynamically changing and yet sufficiently stable over evolutionary time to be statistically clearly recognisable."

I'm not sure what the author is talking about. Our bodies are constantly out of stasis. Cells are constantly being repaired or replaced. Skin cells, muscle cells, cells of your internal organs. If you don't stay warm enough, you die. If you don't stay hydrated, you die. If you don't stress your muscles (ie, exercise) they atrophy. And all of these circumstances involve our internal bodies making transactions with the external world. Has the author controlled for these variables or are they just simply declaring that they don't exist?

"What exactly does science tell us about the idea of a human nature?"

Science can't tell you anything until you have a philosophy of knowledge which defines a thing called "science". So the argument becomes a bit circular here.

This is worse:

"If we take evolutionary biology seriously, then we certainly should reject any essentialist conception of it, such as Aristotle’s."

That is a large if. Here are some unsolved problems in evolutionary biology:

1. Why do people become gay?

2. Why do people adopt children who are unrelated to them?

3. Why does such a large percentage of the population suffer mental illness?

4. Why do people engage in acts of altruism, helping those they are not related to?

5. Why do people believe in gods, and why do they make sacrifices to these gods?

A famous argument against evolutionary biology was made by Richard Dawkins back in 1976, in his book The Selfish Gene. As Dawkins says in that book: "We can rise above our genes; indeed, we do every time we use contraceptives."

Before we "take evolutionary biology seriously" we need to carefully consider all of the arguments against it. And since so much of this article depends on "take evolutionary biology seriously", the whole article is weak.

Mind you, I believe a strong case can be made for a human nature. But I wouldn't build that case on evolutionary biology, without first addressing the known limits of evolutionary biology. A stronger case could be built if one first argued for independent agency in the processes arising from genes. This is the "ghost in the machine" argument. But that argument would have something in common with the philosophers who are being criticized in this article.