Human Nature
What is Human Nature
•	What it means to be human
•	What humans share in common
What It Means to Be Human: Early Conceptions
•	Usually built on a contrast with other animals
•	Long history of defining humans in contrast to other animals
•	Aristotle – rational animal
•	Early Christian
–	Soul
–	Original Sin
The Great Chain of Being
•	Medieval and Christian although adopted even by secular thinkers
•	Every animal has a place on a chain
–	Order based on complexity and ability to think
–	Gradations between species – Natura non facit saltum
–	Static
–	Therefore no evolution
•	Importance of correct classification – criteria
–	Anatomical complexity
–	Reasoning capacities
What It Means to Be Human: Enlightenment
•	Discovery of primates
•	Different “races”
•	Feral Children
–	Viktor – Wild Boy of Aveyron
–	Others
•	Attention to retarded and mentally ill
•	Frankenstein
Enlightenment Issues of Classification
•	New ideas of progress
•	Religion no longer key
•	Rise of science
•	Classification seen as crucial
–	Different types (species?) of human?
–	Criteria become critical
–	A continuum?
Victorian Ideas
•	Progress is possible with rationality
•	But nature has created gradations
–	Social class
–	Gender
–	Race
•	Interference with the natural social order is disastrous – Social Darwinism
How to Reconcile Progress and Order
•	Social class and racial differences natural in sense of genetic
•	Hence progress in hands of upper classes (who also benefit)
•	And the lower classes (races, genders) must be led 
•	And know their place in the natural order
The Evolution Upheaval
•	Built on notions of progress
•	But progress is biological as well as intellectual
•	A dynamic Great Chain of Being
•	Recognition that humans are not so special
Twentieth Century
•	Evolution of humans – at what point do we become human?
•	Biological classification fuzzy
•	Genetics – DNA defines us?
The Other Issue – What Humans Have in Common
•	Features may be shared with other animals
•	Two fundamental questions
–	Why do we think as we do?
–	Why do we behave as we do?
•	An auxiliary question –humans and society
–	Organization of society
–	Effects of culture on thought and behavior
The Issue of Human Cognition
•	Two basic related issues
–	How much knowledge comes from senses?
–	Is some knowledge innate?
•	Ancient distinction between rationalism and empiricism
–	Empiricists defend notion that knowledge comes only from senses
–	Rationalists argue that some or all is guided by pre-existing knowledge
The Empiricist Lineup
•	Aristotle
•	But mostly British
–	Locke 
–	Berkeley
–	Hume
•	Modern version is behaviorism
The Empiricist Agenda
•	All knowledge comes from senses
•	Typically ideas formed into more complex arrangements through associations
•	Easy to relate to physical sciences
•	Can be quite optimistic perspective
The Rationalist Lineup
•	Plato
•	French and German
–	Descartes
–	Leibnitz
–	Kant
•	More modern: Piaget, Chomsky
The Rationalist Agenda
•	Sense data are important
•	But must be guided by pre-existing ideas
–	Platonic forms
–	Categories of thought
–	Schemas, world views, etc.
•	Gives meaning to experience
•	Also produces errors
The argument about innateness
•	Empiricists don’t accept any innate knowledge
•	But where do pre-existing knowledge structures come from?
•	And what is their nature?  
–	Few innate ideas (but God, morality, number?)
–	Probably more like categories or capacities
•	Important issue in modern psychology
–	Evolutionary arguments
–	Developmental issues
The Issue of Behavior and Its Sources
•	Usually seen as a motivation issue
•	What are our fundamental drives or motives
•	And what does this say about
–	The importance of culture in constraining or amplifying 
–	The nature of government and society
Two Contrasting Positions
•	Humans are egotistical and selfish
–	Hedonism – seeks rewards and avoid costs
–	Government must inhibit hedonism
–	But how can we have any society or government?
•	Humans are that but also altruistic
–	The how do we account for anti-social behavior?
–	How much of our behavior is created by culture?
–	And does culture corrupt an essentially good human nature?
Hobbes and Hedonism
•	1588-1679
•	Concerned to write a science of human nature using metaphors of motion (Galileo)
•	Strong form of hedonism
•	Imagines state of nature
•	Seek glory and avoid death, violent death
A summary quote
•	“And therefore in the first place I put for a general inclination of all mankind, a perpetual and restless desire of power after power that ceasest only in death. And the cause of this, is not always that a man hopes for a more intense delight than he has already attained to; or that he cannot be content with a moderate power; but because he cannot assure the power and means to live well. Which he hath present, without the acquisition of more.”
Quote
•	“Nature hath made men so equal, in the faculties of the body, and mind; as though though there be found one man sometimes manifestly stronger in body, or of quicker mind than another; yet when all is reckoned together, the difference between man and man is not so considerable, as that one man can thereby claim to himself any benefit to which another might not pretend as well.”
Consequences
•	Power is a zero-sum game
•	People are basically equal
•	Competition
•	And fear of violent death from one another
•	And the desire for glory (vain glory), a kind of social capital
Quote
•	“ Again, men have no pleasure, but on the contrary a great deal of grief, in keeping company, where there is no power able to over-awe them all. For every man looketh that his companion should value him at the same rate he sets upon himself’ and…naturally endeavors…to extort a greater value from his contempters by damage and from others by the example”
The result is continual social conflict
•	“hereby it is manifest that during the time men live without a common power to keep them all in awe, that they are in that condition called war; and such a war, as is of every man against every man”
•	Indeed the life of man “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short”
The Hobbesian Problem of Order
•	If we begin with such egoistic human nature how can we have a stable society?
•	Hobbes: we fear violent death more than we love freedom 
–	Epicurean and Stoic notion that pains are more intense than pleasures
–	Are willing to give up freedom for security – Freud
•	Social contract 
–	Create larger power
–	The state has all power
Responses to Hobbes
•	Nature takes care of the problem
–	Mandeville’s Fable of the Bees
–	Smith and the Invisible Hand of God
–	Ultimately Darwin’s theory of evolution
•	Others suggest people are not completely egoistic
–	The Cambridge Platonists
–	Shaftesbury (Third Earl, Anthony Ashley Cooper) who sees and important countervailing principle in Stoic philosophy
•	Sympathy or altruism
•	Scottish social theory and Locke-Jefferson
A Contrasting View – Rousseau
•	1712-1788
•	Interesting life
–	A sponge
–	Hypocritical views on childrearing
–	Constant fights with other French intellectuals
•	As unsystematic as Hobbes was systematic
–	Hard to get a totally consistent picture
–	Logic secondary to romantic ideals
Rousseau’s State of Nature
•	People were naturally good
–	Or at least not hedonistic
–	But this basic nature was highly plastic
–	And affected by culture and education
•	And equal in all that counts
–	Moral
–	psychological
Rousseau’s View of Culture
•	Shapes people’s motives and desires
–	Could be for good
–	But not in 18th Century French society
•	Modern Society corrupts
–	Private property and materialism are root causes
–	Create desires to impress and gain power
–	Create artificial means of achieving it
Rousseau’s Influence
•	French Revolution
•	Notions of childhood as innocence and romantic unfolding influenced education
•	Influenced Marx
–	Corrupting influence of property
–	More generally the power of economic system to affect culture and individuals
Human Nature and Culture
•	Culture as a corrupting power
•	Positive views of culture
–	A restraining force
–	Can also encourage moral behavior built on human nature 
•	Hard to separate culture and individual
–	Cultures “go with flow”
–	Cultures constrained by human nature as much as reverse