Human nature is frequently evoked to characterize our species and describe how it differs from others. But how should we understand this concept? What is the nature of a species? Some take our nature to be an essence and argue that because humans lack an essence, they also lack a nature. Others argue for non-essentialist ways of understanding human nature, which usually aim to provide criteria for sorting human traits into one of two bins, the one belonging to our nature and the other outside our nature. This Element argues that both the essentialist and trait bin approaches are misguided. Instead, the author develops a trait cluster account of human nature, which holds that human nature is based on the distribution of our traits over our (actual and possible) life histories. One benefit of this account is that it aligns human nature with the human sciences, rendering the central concern of the human sciences to be the study of human nature. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.
Author(s): Grant Ramsey
Series: Elements in the Philosophy of Biology
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Year: 2023
Language: English
Pages: 65
City: Cambridge
Cover
Title page
Copyright page
Human Nature
Contents
1 Introduction
2 Against Human Nature
2.1 What Is a Human?
2.2 Essences and Evolutionary Trees
2.3 Hull’s Argument
3 Is Human Nature a Bin of Traits?
3.1 Machery’s Trait Bin Account
3.2 Kronfeldner’s Trait Bin Account
4 The Trait Cluster Account of Human Nature
4.1 The Life History Trait Cluster Account
4.2 Other Trait Cluster Accounts: Griffiths
4.3 Other Trait Cluster Accounts: Cashdan
5 Challenges to the LTC Account of Human Nature
5.1 The Permissiveness Challenge
5.2 Does the LTC Account Leave the Human Out of Human Nature?
5.3 Isn’t Human Nature about Our Core Instead of Veneer?
5.4 Isn’t Human Nature about What’s Within?
6 What Can We Do with the LTC Account of Human Nature?
6.1 Can Human Nature Explain Human Traits on the LTC Account?
6.2 Does the Study of Twins, Triplets, and Other Multiples Give Us
Insight into Our Nature?
6.3 Can the LTC Account of Human Nature Tell Us How We Differ
from Other Species?
6.4 Can the LTC Account Make Sense of Human Nature References
in the Media?
6.5 Can Human Nature Guide Our Moral Behavior?
7 Conclusions
References
Acknowledgments
