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Mr. Spock
Skeptic Friend
USA
99 Posts |
 Posted - 03/29/2002 : 17:49:15
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Poll Question:
Having participated in the "personal freedom" discussion, I felt as if one fundamental issue which must be dealt with before defining rights and freedoms is that of human nature, and so I will indulge in a bit of philosophical anthropology here. While I cannot list all points of view, we can at least start with these options (not all of which are mutually exclusive).
Regarding Human Nature:
"It has been my experience that folks with no vices have very few virtues." --Abe Lincoln
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Lars_H
SFN Regular
Germany
630 Posts |
Posted - 03/29/2002 : 18:53:00 [Permalink]
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I often hear theories that people are, if left alone, one extrem or another and need a cretain element to become what they are today. I don't buy these.
Humans are what humans are. You can't just draw any lines between what parts of a human come from his genes and wich come from his environment.
Everything we do is part of our nature. The societies we form are a part of Human Nature. Human Nature is the product of evolution, but that does not mean that you can sum it up with survival-of-the-fitest. It just is a collection of properties and remains of properties that at one point were an advantage.
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ronnywhite
SFN Regular
501 Posts |
Posted - 03/29/2002 : 21:57:06 [Permalink]
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I voted for sociobiological propensities as my best guess, but I'm not sure how much or little they help our survival overall, since the traits favored when we mostly evolved (for one, the heaviest fist) might not apply as much anymore. In Pinker's excellent book on evolutionary psychology which was referred to in a previous post, he mentions that he's going to do as he chooses, regardless of what his genes dictate- that goes on, but so does our "hardwired" behaviors. The software determines our nature, but it's built on the hardware. I think the extent to which violence dominates movies and video games popular among youth is probably our hardwiring in control, and I doubt it's in our best interests as a species in this age(?) Well, a "Mother Theresa" video game probably wouldn't pull in too many quarters, so I can't fault the software publishers.
Ron White
Edited by - ronnywhite on 03/29/2002 22:27:25 |
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Snake
SFN Addict
USA
2511 Posts |
Posted - 03/29/2002 : 23:18:45 [Permalink]
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I voted myth. Just so you'll know who put that vote there.
"If you succeed, you sell. If you "fail" you learn." |
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Snake
SFN Addict
USA
2511 Posts |
Posted - 03/29/2002 : 23:23:51 [Permalink]
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quote:
I voted myth. Just so you'll know who put that vote there.
"If you succeed, you sell. If you "fail" you learn."
Whoops, there's more than one myth.
It was the:
''we are entirely determined by our environments.'' myth.
Not that you asked but, it's from my own presonal experience that I arrive at that idea.
"If you succeed, you sell. If you "fail" you learn." |
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Mr. Spock
Skeptic Friend
USA
99 Posts |
Posted - 03/30/2002 : 05:21:09 [Permalink]
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I personally go with the "sociobiological propensities," though I'm prepared to admit that the results of sociobiology, empirical anthropology and evolutionary psychology are still a bit unclear regarding exactly what this means. I brought this up partly because there is a loud buzz in the skeptical literature about this topic (see vol 9, no. 1 of Skeptic magazine).
Many are (rightly, I think) alarmed at the increasingly non-empirical and even anti-scientific tendencies in certain "blank slate" approaches. This has resulted in what Shermer calls "cognitive creationism," which artificially places all discussion of human action outside the realm of empirical study. (For instance, the division of the natural and social sciences seems to imply that human behaviour is somehow not natural).
On the other hand, I would agree that any theory that univocally states "human nature is X" is as wrongheaded as the idea that nothing intelligent can be said about human nature at all.
Why does it matter? It seems that any model of social and political organization presupposes a view of human nature. Western democracy, for instance is based on John Locke's view that we are basically cooperative enough to ensure that equality and freedom can be achieved through self-goverment. Authoritarians, on the other hand, often embrace Hobbes' view that since humans are basically self-serving, a rigid social order is needed to keep things from degenerating into anarchy.
Even sociobiological approaches have political implications. There seems to be ample evidence to suggest that we, like our primate cousins, are naturally builders of hierarchies. If this is the case, then the communistic ideal of total equality simply won't work. At the same time, we are at least partially able to determine how the hierarchies we establish treat specific individuals.
I guess that I see the whole nurture/nature thing, as it applies to human nature and other topics, as a delicate balancing act where we get into trouble by taking one side exclusively.
"It has been my experience that folks with no vices have very few virtues." --Abe Lincoln |
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Omega
Skeptic Friend
Denmark
164 Posts |
Posted - 03/31/2002 : 16:50:34 [Permalink]
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Ronnywhite> About video-games. It works both ways I think. Violence/kill/blood games are promoted as if it was a matter of life and death. Perhaps it's our inherent dislike of these things that makes society wanting to ban them or keep them from kids. Thusly making them more interesting, not because kids are violence-freaks, but because they need to rebel.
Snake> So you think genes can determine our behaviour… or nature? How come?
Mr. Spock> Well, there is a lot of human behaviour which doesn't seem quite natural when you look at it. Drunk driving. Maybe a silly example, but still. Keeping up mass-pollution. Allowing massive pollution in our cities, which is detriment to the health of people living there. Smoking.
Drug use.
And so on and so forth. How our own ancestors lived before they settled into cities some 12.000 years ago is still a debated issue. Unlike our primate cousins our forefathers were far more intelligent and they were self-aware.
I think it's a difficult subject, because many of the details of our modern life we take for granted, as if that was always so. Movies portray early villagers as living in a family unit which is not more than 150 years old as an example.
We get up and live our lives under the tyranny of a clock, telling us when to be where and why. That wasn't always so either.
"All it takes to fly is to fling yourself at the ground... and miss."
- Douglas Adams |
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Lars_H
SFN Regular
Germany
630 Posts |
Posted - 03/31/2002 : 23:33:16 [Permalink]
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quote:
Ronnywhite> About video-games. It works both ways I think. Violence/kill/blood games are promoted as if it was a matter of life and death. Perhaps it's our inherent dislike of these things that makes society wanting to ban them or keep them from kids. Thusly making them more interesting, not because kids are violence-freaks, but because they need to rebel.
Inherent dislike of violence/kill/blood?
Inherent in what?
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Snake> So you think genes can determine our behaviour… or nature? How come?
Instincts. We see it in animals who are not rasied or thought in any way by their parents, but still develop the same behaviour as them. With humans it is sometimes hard to tell what is learned and what is inborn, but it would be foolish to assume that nothing of our behaviour is determined by our genetic makeup.
One could argue that indirectly even the learned parts of human behaviour are determined by genetics. The societies we build are what forms our learned behaviour, and the types of societies we build are determined by how our genes.
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Mr. Spock> Well, there is a lot of human behaviour which doesn't seem quite natural when you look at it.
That comes from using an unsuitable defintion of 'natural'.
Everything that happens in anture is natural. Everything that animals or plants do is natural. Everything that humans do is natural for humans.
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Drunk driving. Maybe a silly example, but still. Keeping up mass-pollution. Allowing massive pollution in our cities, which is detriment to the health of people living there. Smoking.
Drug use.
What you mean is that we do things that appear to run contrary to our own interests.
They are example of stupid and illogical human behavior, but not unnatural ones.
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And so on and so forth. How our own ancestors lived before they settled into cities some 12.000 years ago is still a debated issue. Unlike our primate cousins our forefathers were far more intelligent and they were self-aware.
I think it's a difficult subject, because many of the details of our modern life we take for granted, as if that was always so. Movies portray early villagers as living in a family unit which is not more than 150 years old as an example.
Either I misunderstand completly what you are trying to sya or you have ommited a few zeros. 150 appears to be several order of magitude of.
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We get up and live our lives under the tyranny of a clock, telling us when to be where and why. That wasn't always so either.
You have quite romatic delusions about or primitive ancestors if you think, that they lived a bette |
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Mr. Spock
Skeptic Friend
USA
99 Posts |
Posted - 04/01/2002 : 04:55:25 [Permalink]
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Lars pretty well stated what I was going to say about defining the word "natural" as well as the myth of the noble savage, which has been sufficiently dispelled by contemporary anthropology.
I guess I might add that some point to consciousness or self-awareness (which are not necessarily the same thing) indicate something other than natural about human beings, since these phenomena have yet to be unequivocally explained by science. I would respond that, as with other mysteries, the lack of a scientific explanation does not imply that such an explanation is impossible; it simply means that we haven't discovered the answer yet. Similarly, I would be willing to regard consciousness as a completely random (though ultimately advantageous)evolutionary occurence, rather than the ultimate "achievement" of the evolutionary process.
In other words, consciousness may be an integral part of our nature, but it doesn't set us apart from the rest of nature in general.
"What sane person could live in this world and not be crazy?" --Ursula LeGuin |
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Omega
Skeptic Friend
Denmark
164 Posts |
Posted - 04/03/2002 : 16:42:19 [Permalink]
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Lars_H> You think society has a liking for violence or what?
And I still have a hard time believing there are things like “criminal genes” or “homosexual genes”. We are, what 99% genetically equal to chimpanzees. I think the last 1% make us physically different. Not psychologically different.
No, I disagree that all human actions are natural. Unlike animals were not solely driven by instincts for the reason that we can think about them. I don't see self-awareness as just a thought-mode with which to contemplate instincts.
And the family-unit we know today actually is not that old. It just became practical. Man+woman+2.5 children in one living-unit.
I don't have specifically romantic ideas about our ancestors. I just don't subscribe to the view that it was brute beats brute and strongest eats everything (we'd have died out if that was really the case). I'm quite amused at the constant description of our progenitors as a bunch of uncivilised savages incapable of corporation.
I have no idea how long the life-expectancy was back then. But I doubt life was as short, brutal and nasty as you describe it.
Spock> Contemporary anthropology as you say, is not a big agreeing group. So as we've entered the 21st century we see a world of greed, terrible inequalities between rich and poor, of racist and national chauvinist prejudice and horrific wars. So it's easy to believe that it was always so, that it's always been this way and so it can be no different.
And this is not only being said by some anthropologists but also politicians, philosophers, journalists and sociologists. They paint a picture of hierarchy, deference, greed and brutality as “natural” features of human behaviour. The socalled “law of genetics”, but you can't draw such a conclusion from genuinely scientific studies (see e.g S. Rose “Lifelines” or R. Lewontin “The Doctrine of DNA”). You have a lot of supposedly scientific paperbacks that propagate such a view – with talks of humans as “Naked Apes” (Desmond Morris) the “killer imperative” (Robert Ardrey) and programmed through the “selfish gene” (Richard Dawkins).
But the anthropologist Richard Lee summarised his findings as:
“Before the rise of the state and the entrenchment of social inequality, people lived for millenia in small-scale kin-based social groups, in which the core institutions of economic life included collective or common ownership of land and resources, generalised reciprocity in the distribution of food, and relatively egalitarian political relations.”
And I think consciousness or self-awareness is exactly what sets us apart from the rest of nature. Otherwise what would you say it is? I don't see any other species doing what we do.
"All it takes to fly is to fling yourself at the ground... and miss."
- Douglas Adams |
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PhDreamer
SFN Regular
USA
925 Posts |
Posted - 04/03/2002 : 21:03:18 [Permalink]
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quote:
Lars_H> You think society has a liking for violence or what?
And I still have a hard time believing there are things like “criminal genes” or “homosexual genes”. We are, what 99% genetically equal to chimpanzees. I think the last 1% make us physically different. Not psychologically different.
No, I disagree that all human actions are natural. Unlike animals were not solely driven by instincts for the reason that we can think about them. I don't see self-awareness as just a thought-mode with which to contemplate instincts.
And the family-unit we know today actually is not that old. It just became practical. Man+woman+2.5 children in one living-unit.
I think you are misusing your terms. Homosexuality and criminal behavior are certainly natural in that they are the products of cause-and-effect relationships. They may not be behaviorally normal but one can say that about many behaviors.
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And I think consciousness or self-awareness is exactly what sets us apart from the rest of nature. Otherwise what would you say it is? I don't see any other species doing what we do.
I'd say religion, a sense of cosmic purpose. Certainly no other species is as inscrutably self-important as h. sapiens.
An expert is a man who has made all the mistakes which can be made in a very narrow field.
-Niels Bohr
Edited by - PhDreamer on 04/03/2002 21:06:17 |
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Mr. Spock
Skeptic Friend
USA
99 Posts |
Posted - 04/04/2002 : 05:11:50 [Permalink]
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First I want to apologize for occaisionally exhibiting the Socratic tendency to appear acrimonious when I'm simply playing the devil's advocate. I guess that it's just part of my nature.
I guess we need to get back to what we mean by "natural." I suppose that any phenomena which can, in principle, be explained scientifically is natural. Since I, along with most skeptics, subscribe to ontological materialism, I see no reason why human beings and human behaviour should be regarded as anything other than natural. Again, the difference between the subject matter of the human sciences and the physical sciences is largely a difference of complexity, not kind.
I guess that there are reasons why some would recoil from such a position:
1) Does this imply a crude determinism? Not necessarily. Even my cat exhibits self-awareness and volition. The mechanisms I possess may be a bit more refined, but there is no reason to believe that my "free will" is anything other than a natural phenomenon. The whole idea of free will (as with consciousness) might have to be rescued from folk-psychology and more occult explanations to be understood naturalistically, but there is no reason to believe that it can't be.
2) Religion aside, doesn't a naturalistic understanding of ourselves negate our "higher" aspirations? Yes and no. On the one hand, as PHDreamer stated, it does deflate our last remaining notions that we are the center of the universe (which, I think, is a good thing). However, I believe that our appreciation of both nature and human achievement (e.g., artistic, scientific, cultural, moral, etc.) can be enriched by viewing ourselves and our accomplishments as part of nature.
I know that I have brought up more topics than I can adequately address in a short space, but welcome any continued response.
"What sane person could live in this world and not be crazy?" --Ursula LeGuin |
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Omega
Skeptic Friend
Denmark
164 Posts |
Posted - 04/07/2002 : 15:21:37 [Permalink]
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PhDreamer> Then we should define “natural”. To me it looks as if anything humans do and have done is “natural” in your definition. As a scientific consequence of cause and effect.
Religion sets us apart from other animals, yes. But self-awareness in itself does that, too.
Our ability to contemplate actions and change our behaviour.
I just watched the BBC programme “The Blue Planet”, where a huge group of fish every year swim to the coast of Canada, there to become dinner for dolphins, sharks, sea-birds and just about every other predator in the area. Why don't the fish find another place to lay their eggs?
“Certainly no other species is as inscrutably self-important as h. sapiens” No other species we know of can be. What is your point?
Mr. Spock> Free will? Oh, dear :) Let's avoid free will for a while. That is an entirely different discussion as I see it. You can't really have free will unless you know all the options.
Okay. I don't see anything “natural” about wars, rape, crime and anything else that harms humans. I see a society that furthers traits like selfishness and ego-drive to a point, where it causes damage to humanity as a whole (16 people die each minute of starvation or poverty-related diseases etc). Where the profit and privileges of the few are the dynamos of most of what society is about. I don't blame your average Mr. Joe for the state of affairs. I don't see humans as “naturally” greedy or selfish or violent. I don't see them as “saints” either (and that I even have to point this out shows the level of indoctrination).
I see humans react to their circumstances. We all have natural drives for food, water, shelter, love, sociality and so on and so forth. We seek to meet those needs. The way things are run now is not “natural” in my definition, as we're on our way to pollute ourselves to death, and the leaders don't do enough about it in the holy name of the market.
From a historical and sociological point of view you can say that it IS natural, because what we have now is an effect of one or more earlier causes. But since humans do have the ability to contemplate themselves, the consequences of their actions and some options I don't see it as natural.
"All it takes to fly is to fling yourself at the ground... and miss."
- Douglas Adams |
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PhDreamer
SFN Regular
USA
925 Posts |
Posted - 04/07/2002 : 21:11:15 [Permalink]
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quote:
PhDreamer> Then we should define “natural”. To me it looks as if anything humans do and have done is “natural” in your definition. As a scientific consequence of cause and effect.
I know of no other way to define 'natural.'
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Religion sets us apart from other animals, yes. But self-awareness in itself does that, too.
Our ability to contemplate actions and change our behaviour.
I'm not so sure. I think a strong case can be made that some other primates exhibit 'self-aware' behaviors. I think what they lack is a sense of extreme cosmic curiosity and self-importance.
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I just watched the BBC programme “The Blue Planet”, where a huge group of fish every year swim to the coast of Canada, there to become dinner for dolphins, sharks, sea-birds and just about every other predator in the area. Why don't the fish find another place to lay their eggs?
Fish don't have much of a cerebral cortex, that's for sure.
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“Certainly no other species is as inscrutably self-important as h. sapiens” No other species we know of can be. What is your point?
You have made it nicely, thank you.
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Mr. Spock> Free will? Oh, dear :) Let's avoid free will for a while. That is an entirely different discussion as I see it. You can't really have free will unless you know all the options.
Au contraire, I think this leads to a reduction of free will. The more you know about potential outcomes of a decision, the more that knowledge will influence the decision you make.
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Okay. I don't see anything “natural” about wars, rape, crime and anything else that harms humans. I see a society that furthers traits like selfishness and ego-drive to a point, where it causes damage to humanity as a whole (16 people die each minute of starvation or poverty-related diseases etc). Where the profit and privileges of the few are the dynamos of most of what society is about. I don't blame your average Mr. Joe for the state of affairs. I don't see humans as “naturally” greedy or selfish or violent.
Of course, humans are not entirely greedy or selfish or violent, if this is what you mean (and I must say it is rather difficult to understand what you mean by 'natural' here). They do, however, exhibit those behaviors in response to certain stimuli. I would certainly call this natural; at least some of these behaviors have been selected for.
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I don't see them as “saints” either (and that I even have to point this out shows the level of indoctrination).
I see hu |
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Snake
SFN Addict
USA
2511 Posts |
Posted - 04/08/2002 : 01:59:05 [Permalink]
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quote:
Everything we do is part of our nature. The societies we form are a part of Human Nature. Human Nature is the product of evolution, but that does not mean that you can sum it up with survival-of-the-fitest. It just is a collection of properties and remains of properties that at one point were an advantage.
Could it be that somewhere in the chemistry of the brain, the genes, bits of the past 'tell' us what we are attracted to?
I'm thinking, what is it about Egypt that has fascinated me since I was a child, and the other day I wondered out loud to my room mate, could it be because my ancestors probably came from that area.
I'm going to have to ask my brother if he's ever had the feeling he's been a builder on a pyramid or some other connection to the place too.
Everyone said it couldn't be done. So no one tried. Execpt one little old man who lived in a cave on the other side of the world. He hadn't heard it couldn't be done. So he tried it. He couldn't do it either.
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Snake
SFN Addict
USA
2511 Posts |
Posted - 04/08/2002 : 02:30:57 [Permalink]
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quote:
I think you are misusing your terms. Homosexuality and criminal behavior are certainly natural in that they are the products of cause-and-effect relationships. They may not be behaviorally normal but one can say that about many behaviors
Are you saying that criminals only kill or steal, because something caused them to?
For one thing, some crimes are only a criminal act because society says so. Criminals who have no reguard for others have different brains, but does that make it not natural?
And what IS normal. I am NormaL . Aside from that, homosexuals are not abnormal to themselves. All things being equal that is, if one accepts himself, and wasn't raised to think it's strange behavior, I mean. Which it isn't.
I don't understand how you say something is natural but not normal?
Normal behavior is determand by society and society is usualy wrong.
Everyone said it couldn't be done. So no one tried. Execpt one little old man who lived in a cave on the other side of the world. He hadn't heard it couldn't be done. So he tried it. He couldn't do it either.
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