
Human nature matters - kawera
https://aeon.co/essays/theres-no-philosophy-of-life-without-a-theory-of-human-nature
======
SCHiM
There's an interesting snippet in the beginning of the article:

> 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.

~~~
resu_nimda
I've long felt that intelligence is a property of the group rather than the
individual. Language is inextricably linked to our conception of intelligence,
and having someone to talk to is a prerequisite.

I feel like this is very important and seems to be missed in modern AI
research. I think of most of today's systems as monoliths, lone individuals
raised in isolation (receiving training data does not constitute
communication/language development), forever stunted in all of the more
"humanist" facets of intelligence.

Is there research going into more "social" systems of multiple "actors" that
are able to interact/communicate with each other? Perhaps even develop their
own language, one that we might not be able to understand? (How would we even
identify such a thing? Think of dolphins - we know something is going on
there, but we haven't been able to translate it.)

~~~
cbhl
I agree, the idea that "intelligence is a property of the group" is an
interesting idea that is worth exploring further with respect to AI research.

I think the indie puzzle platformer Thomas Was Alone explores this idea in a
cute and approachable way.

[https://store.steampowered.com/app/220780/Thomas_Was_Alone/](https://store.steampowered.com/app/220780/Thomas_Was_Alone/)

It's also worth noting that AlphaGo was trained against copies of itself in
later stages of its development -- while this isn't "communication" in the
human sense, it does enable copies of the AI to learn from each other.

[https://deepmind.com/research/alphago/alphago-vs-alphago-
sel...](https://deepmind.com/research/alphago/alphago-vs-alphago-self-play-
games/)

------
danharaj
One must distinguish human nature, the shared phenomena of our being, and
"human nature", the rhetorical bludgeon that ends productive discussion.

~~~
scythe
The proposition "there are inherent psychological desires of humans" \-- and I
must say _desires_ to distinguish from more flexible characteristics like
rationality or sociality -- is supported by a variety of good heuristics such
as the evolutionary origin of people, the existence of significant similarity
in social structures across cultures (with stronger similarities in _literate_
cultures), and observed failures in many attempts to manipulate desires (most
notably David Reimer). However, the prospect of determining what these are is
difficult, the justifications behind the best theories of inherent desires are
usually both complex and epistemologically imperfect, and the game of
telephone that relays scientific information to a popular audience tends to
oversimplify the findings, overestimate the appropriate confidence level, and
distort the conclusions to better comport with the preconceptions of the
audience. As a result, colloquial discussions of how human nature impacts our
lives are a huge minefield of pseudoscience, narcissism and utopianism that
rarely support better understanding of any situation. Most useful applications
of psychology depend on the application of empirical data describing some
settings to other closely related settings, rather than the great theoretical
leaps in the reasoning applied in the natural sciences. As such, when a
thinker is prone to making such leaps (eg Jordan Peterson) it's a red flag
that they're a charlatan, or (eg "Dr. Phil") are willing to distort what they
do know scientifically in order to gain notoriety.

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woodruffw
The claim that the contemporary analytic tradition has "rejected the very idea
of human nature" is a little strange, given the emphasis that many in the
tradition place on rational capacity or rationality[1] being the
distinguishing and essential characteristic of humanity.

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.

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erikpukinskis
The introduction piqued my interest but the author doesn’t seem to follow
through on any claims. “Something something we’re genetically different so we
have a different nature”

------
mantas
It's funny how the more we know about human nature, the less it is regarded by
philosophy...

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

~~~
kadenshep
What does this even mean?

~~~
camdenlock
It’s currently fashionable to reject the idea that the functioning of the
human mind is influenced at all by genetics.

Some famous philosophers of the past, despite lacking the wealth of scientific
data we have today, managed to conclude more or less the opposite, which (we
now know) is correct: our minds are both programmed by our environment AND
come pre-populated with a wide array of firmware modules thanks to the
phenotypic expression of our genes.

For a really great in-depth exploration of these facts, check out Steven
Pinker’s 2002 book “The Blank Slate”.

~~~
kadenshep
>It’s currently fashionable to reject the idea that the functioning of the
human mind is influenced at all by genetics.

I was unaware of this fashion in either the philosophical or scientific
communities.

~~~
ILikeConemowk
The "scientific and philosophical" communities are, it turns out, embedded in
academia. Therefore, they cannot escape the trends that are born in those
circles whether they are based on facts or emotions and thus pseudoscience.

~~~
kadenshep
They're pretty large and varied circles. 99% of it definitely isn't based on
emotion

------
alexashka
Can somebody explain the fascination with taking different schools of
philosophy and talking about who thought what?

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_

~~~
Barrin92
It's a way to structure a discussion. Because philosophy is a pretty wide
field, clarifying that you're talking about Rousseau's concept of human nature
is simply a way to indicate that you're talking about a particular school or
flavour of thought, without having to recite the entire body of work.
Classification is always useful, not just in philosophy. It's no different
from classifying mathematical fields as 'number theory' or 'algebra', just to
indicate what frame of mind you're in when you talk about a problem.

~~~
alexashka
Structure is needed to accomplish something. You're thoroughly missing my
point, let me try an analogy:

I am going to gather 100 fools, and ask each, what they imagine life on mars
must be like. I am then going to structure their opinions, write them down in
books, and so on.

Replace 'life on mars' with 'human nature'. I fail to see the difference
between my example and the presented article.

Now if someone were to go study physics, invent a rocket, get into the rocket,
fly to Mars, and have the ability to report back their findings - that'd be
discovering life on mars.

I'd listen to his/her take on life on mars with great interest. I'd call that
a scientist with an informed opinion.

~~~
Barrin92
But Rousseau was no fool in the field of philosophy, he was in fact one of the
chief contributors to the philosophy of human nature, so that analogy makes no
sense at all.

His ideas are still very relevant and have seen a resurgence in recent years,
as he was one of the first philosophers to tie his philosophy of human nature
to a political and social criticism of elites, something that is again
extremely topical today.

------
bobhansen128
It's good to start with definitions. The author says,

"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?

~~~
fjsolwmv
Homeostasis means that the system is stable even though is varies slightly. It
doesn't mean that the system is completely frozen like a rock.

~~~
eli_gottlieb
Eh, the critique is pretty accurate. A lot of us favor the allostatic model
over the homeostatic one for biological regulation.

------
lkrubner
There is a lot in this essay that is problematic. I'll offer just two
examples:

" _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.

