Agustín Fuentes - Conversations on Human Nature

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Conversations on Human Nature

Conversations on Human Nature

Agustn Fuentes and Aku Visala

First published 2016 by Left Coast Press, Inc.

Published 2016 by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

Copyright 2016 Taylor & Francis

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Notice:
Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Fuentes, Agustin, author. | Visala, Aku, author.
Title: Conversations on human nature / Agustin Fuentes and Aku Visala.
Description: Walnut Creek, California: Left Coast Press, Inc., [2015] |
Includes bibliographical references.
Identifiers: LCCN 2015024039| ISBN 9781629582269 (hardback: alk. paper) |
ISBN 9781629582276 (pbk.: alk. paper) | ISBN 9781629582290 (consumer
ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Philosophical anthropology. | Human beings. |
Scholars--Interviews.
Classification: LCC BD450 .F79455 2015 | DDC 128--dc23
LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015024039

ISBN 978-1-62958-226-9 hardback
ISBN 978-1-62958-227-6 paperback

Contents

Prologue
Human Nature A Contested Concept

Reading the news on a daily basis we've all at one point in time or another lost hope and cursed humanity to the deepest depths of hell: "human beings are just evil!" At the same time, faced with virtuous acts of self-sacrifice or courage, we've also had the opposite experience: perhaps there is still goodness in humanity. Acts of great goodness and unspeakable evil highlight a curious ambivalencethe ambivalence of being human.

We are indeed paradoxes to ourselves. On the one hand, we observe great individual differences. Our friends have different interests, backgrounds, and tastes. One likes heavy metal, whereas another cannot stand it. One is tall and introverted, the other short and extroverted. A colleague from Argentina has a different way of doing things than another colleague from Finland. It seems that we are, as individuals and cultures, truly distinct and different.

On the other hand, there seem to be many things that unite us. A mother playing with her children shows the same kind of love and care in New York and New Delhi. Wherever we go we see weddings and funerals, expressions of love and friendship, fear and hate. Perhaps we are, underneath our respective layers of culture, all the same.

These basic ambivalences of good and evil, similarity and dissimilarity, lead us to ask about human nature. Is there such a thing? Is there something that is at the root of being human, something that would unite us? Or does human nature consist merely of the basic human capacity to be endlessly molded by our experiences and culture?

The question of human nature has been and is a central topic of philosophy, ethics, religion, and the sciences. It is, however, most often the poet and the religious individual who are able to pose the question of human nature in ways that express our ambivalent experience of being human. Consider Alexander Pope's (1688-1744) An Essay on Man :

Know then thyself, presume not God to scan;

The proper study of mankind is Man.
Placed on this isthmus of a middle state,
A being darkly wise, and rudely great:
With too much knowledge for the Skeptic side
With too much weakness for the Stoic's pride,
He hangs between; in doubt to act, or rest.
In doubt to deem himself a god, or beast;
In doubt his mind or body to prefer,
Born to die, and reasoning but to err;
Alike in ignorance, his reason such,
Whether he thinks too little, or too much:
Chaos of thought and passion, all confused;
Still by himself abused, or disabused;
Created half to rise, and half to fall;
Great lord of things, yet a prey to all;
Sole judge of truth, in endless error hurled;
The glory, jest, and riddle of the world!

In the current increasingly globalized world, whether or not there is such a thing as human nature can surely make a difference as to the way we live our lives. We are faced with controversies over increasing inequalities in health, wealth, and power, and with the possibility of human enhancement, the ethical challenges of biological technologies, the beginning and end of life, and various expressions of human sexuality. All these debates involve assumptions about what humans are like. Are there natural, psychological tendencies or not? Do patterns of social inequalities reflect "natural" human tendencies? To what extent is our behavior under our control? Where do our lives begin and end? What about the status of animals or sophisticated computer programs? Can we alter our development by changing our biology, and is it moral to do so?

Some have claimed that biological and psychological sciences can and will answer most of these questions, and that evolutionary biology and neuroscience will reveal to us what our nature is like. Others have rejected such attempts as crude scientism and sought answers from various philosophies, political ideologies, religions, and theologies.

It is clear that what human nature is and whether we actually have one depends on a number of empirical issues about our genes, psychological makeup, culture, evolution, and so forth. However, it seems to us that human nature is not simply a scientific, empirical notion but involves various normative, conceptual, and even metaphysical aspects. As such, our inquiries into human nature are closely connected to a number of ultimate questions regarding the nature of the cosmos, human origins, teleology, and the ways in which we obtain knowledge.

This book is for those, who are, like us, convinced that human nature is a meaningful notion, but also acknowledge that it can be understood in many different ways, some more problematic than others. This is why we take a consciously transdisciplinary approach to human nature. We have invited perspectives from many different disciplines and hoped that something new could come out from the dialogue. Most books on human nature focus on one perspective only, usually a scientific one from biology, psychology, or neuroscience. Our aim is not to provide a novel view of human nature but instead point out how human nature cannot be reduced to one single perspective or definition, scientific or otherwise. This is to be expected: our experience of being human does not reduce neatly into predetermined categories. This is why we should not only include the sciences but the social sciences, theology, and philosophy as well.

This book is the outcome of our collaboration on the Human Nature(s) Project: Assessing and Understanding Transdisciplinary Approaches to Culture, Biology and Human Uniqueness (2011-2014), This John Templeton Foundation funded project had as its goal a road map of how human nature is approached in different fields spanning from anthropology, philosophy, and theology to biology and psychology. The project involved comparisons of diverse and dense literatures, interviews with leading figures in the investigation of human nature across disciplines. A key aim of the project was to focus on deeper integration between participant disciplines. The volume you hold in your hand is one of the outcomes of these endeavors.

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