Verbs, Bones, and Brains

Description

The last few decades have seen an unprecedented surge of empirical and philosophical research into the evolutionary history of Homo sapiens, the origins of the mind/brain, and human culture. This research and its popular interpretations have sparked heated debates about the nature of human beings and how knowledge about humans from the sciences and humanities should be properly understood. The goal of Verbs, Bones, and Brains: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Human Nature is to engage these themes and present current debates, discussions, and discourse for a range of readers. The contributors bring the discussion to life with key experts outlining major concepts paired with cross-disciplinary commentaries in order to create a novel approach to thinking about, and with, human natures. The intent of the contributors to this volume is not to enter into or adjudicate complex philosophical issues of an epistemological or metaphysical nature. Instead, their common concern is to set aside the rigid distinctions between biology and culture that have made such discussions problematic. First, informing their approach is an acknowledgment of the widespread disagreement about such basic metaphysical and epistemological questions as the existence of God, the nature of scientific knowledge, and the existence of essences, among other topics. Second, they try to identify and explicate the assumptions that enter into their conceptualizations of human nature. Throughout, they emphasize the importance of seeking a convergence in our views on human nature, despite metaphysical disagreements. They caution that if convergence eludes us and a common ground cannot be found, this is itself a relevant result: it would reveal to us how deeply our questions about ourselves are connected to our basic metaphysical assumptions. Instead, their focus is on how the interdisciplinary and possibly transdisciplinary conversation can be enhanced in order to identify and develop a common ground on what constitutes human nature.

Sujets

• Life Sciences
• Social Science
• Sociologie, société et politique
• Biology
• Evolution
• Anthropology
• 454 Life Sciences
• Social
• Culture

Informations

• Publié par: University of Notre Dame Press
• Date de parution: 15 janvier 2017
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780268101176
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

VERBS, BONES, AND BRAINS
VERBS, BONES, AND BRAINS

Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Human Nature
EDITED BY AGUST N FUENTES AND AKU VISALA
University of Notre Dame Press
Notre Dame, Indiana
University of Notre Dame Press
Notre Dame, Indiana 46556
www.undpress.nd.edu
All Rights Reserved
Copyright 2017 by University of Notre Dame
Published in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Fuentes, Agust n, editor. | Visala, Aku, editor.
Title: Verbs, bones, and brains : interdisciplinary perspectives on human nature / edited by Agust n Fuentes and Aku Visala.
Description: Notre Dame, Indiana : University of Notre Dame Press, [2016] | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016039770 (print) | LCCN 2016044814 (ebook) | ISBN 9780268101145 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 0268101140 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780268101169 (pdf) | ISBN 9780268101176 (epub)
Subjects: LCSH: Philosophical anthropology. | Human beings.
Classification: LCC BD450.V3735 2016 (print) | LCC BD450 (ebook) | DDC 128-dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016039770
ISBN 9780268101176
This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper) .
This e-Book was converted from the original source file by a third-party vendor. Readers who notice any formatting, textual, or readability issues are encouraged to contact the publisher at [e-mail] .
CONTENTS

Introduction: The Many Faces of Human Nature

Agust n Fuentes and Aku Visala
CHAPTER 1
Off Human Nature

Jonathan Marks
RESPONSE I
On Your Marks Get Set, We re Off Human Nature

James M. Calcagno
RESPONSE II
Rethinking Human Nature: Comments on Jonathan Marks s Anti-Essentialism

Phillip R. Sloan
RESPONSE III
Off Human Nature and On Human Culture: The Importance of the Concept of Culture to Science and Society

Robert Sussman and Linda Sussman
CHAPTER 2
To Human Is a Verb

Tim Ingold
RESPONSE I
Free and Easy Wandering: Humans, Humane Education, and Designing in Harmony with the Nature of the Way

Susan D. Blum
RESPONSE II
On Human Natures: Anthropological and Jewish Musings

Richard Sosis
RESPONSE III
The Humanifying Adventure: A Response to Tim Ingold

Markus M hling
RESPONSE IV
The Ontogenesis of Human Moral Becoming

Darcia Narvaez
CHAPTER 3
Recognizing the Complexity of Personhood: Complex Emergent Developmental Linguistic Relational Neurophysiologicalism

Warren Brown and Brad D. Strawn
RESPONSE I
Self-Organizing Personhood and Many Loose Ends

Lluis Oviedo
RESPONSE II
A Last Hurrah for Dualism?

Kelly James Clark
RESPONSE III
Why the Foundational Question about Human Nature Is Open and Empirical

Carl Gillett
CHAPTER 4
Human Origins and the Emergence of a Distinctively Human Imagination: Theology and the Archaeology of Personhood

J. Wentzel van Huyssteen
RESPONSE I
Constructing the Face, Creating the Collective: Neolithic Mediation of Personhood

Ian Kuijt
RESPONSE II
Imago Dei and the Glabrous Ape

Douglas Hedley
CHAPTER 5
What Is Human Nature For?

Grant Ramsey
RESPONSE I
The Difficulties of Forsaking Normativity

Neil Arner
RESPONSE II
Some Remarks on Human Nature and Naturalism

Aku Visala
Epilogues

Putting Evolutionary Theory to Work in Investigating Human Nature(s)

Agust n Fuentes

Moving Us Forward?

Celia Deane-Drummond

List of Contributors

Index
INTRODUCTION

The Many Faces of Human Nature
A GUST N F UENTES AND A KU V ISALA
The past few decades have seen an unprecedented surge of empirical and philosophical research on the evolutionary history of Homo sapiens , the origins of the mind/brain and human culture. This research and its popular interpretations have sparked heated debates about the nature of human beings and how knowledge about humans from the sciences and humanities should be properly understood.
To put it mildly, human nature is a contested concept. A comparison of Steven Pinker s The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature (2002) and Jesse Prinz s Beyond Human Nature: How Culture and Experience Shape the Human Mind (2012) shows how wildly experts disagree on the topic. For some, human nature is an enemy that needs to be abolished or an outdated scientific idea; for others, it is the cornerstone of the scientific study of humanity.
Some representatives of evolutionary psychology, for instance, fall into the latter camp. Pinker, among others, has argued that behind the dizzying variety of human cultures lies a universal psychology that severely constrains possible expressions of human thinking and behavior. Furthermore, on this view, this universal psychology is largely innate in the sense that its various aspects are adaptations to the challenges that humans confronted in their Pleistocene environment. The driving force behind the evolutionary psychologist s program, it seems, is the conviction that the biological and psychological sciences can and will answer our questions about human nature.
Critics have maintained that not only are these programs based on questionable philosophical and methodological assumptions, but they also fail to account for all the relevant data. Cultures and behaviors are far too diverse to be explained by invoking an innate, universal cognition. Furthermore, recent developments in evolutionary theory seem to challenge the strong adaptationism underlying some of the arguments of Pinker-style evolutionary psychology.
One possible option is to see a much closer integration of cognition and culture in human evolution and development along the lines of niche construction or gene/culture coevolution theories. This would mean, however, that we cannot identify human nature with a set of innate cognitive mechanisms. Instead human nature should be sought from our flexible capacity to create and sustain culture and be shaped by it.
Debates revolving around innate psychological mechanisms and evolutionary psychology are not the only context in which human nature is examined and discussed. Anthropologists have long sought to identify both universal and distinct features in human cultures. Are there patterns in human cultural diversity? If a common ground among cultures can be found, perhaps that would function as a basis for shared ethical views. If there is indeed a biologically determined universal human psychology as evolutionary psychologists suggest, we should expect to see some general patterns or structures.
The quest for uniquely or distinctively human traits has also been of great interest to biologists, psychologists, and anthropologists. What, if anything, distinguishes humans from other animals? How are the psychological and biological traits that contemporary humans possess related to those of their long-dead ancestors? In addition to such scientifically motivated questions, there are a host of perennial philosophical, ethical, and theological issues. Indeed, before the emergence of modern biology, psychology, and social science, philosophy and theology were the main sources of reflection about what humans are and what they are like. Questions concerned the nature of the human soul, virtue, emotions, and free will, as well as morality. Are we naturally inclined toward altruism and selflessness as some classical liberal thinkers such as Rousseau claimed, or is our state of nature war against everybody as Hobbes insisted?
Even from these brief reflections, it is clear that human nature has a strong ethical and political component. Whether there is such a thing as human nature can surely make a difference in the way we live our lives. In our contemporary situation, we are faced with controversies over 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, whether they have some natural goals or ends.
It is abundantly clear that there is no single discourse or debate about human nature. By the same token, there are various distinct and more or less incompatible quests for human nature, and it is often unclear where the boundaries between these various enterprises should be drawn. This is the reason we recommend taking a wide, interdisciplinary stance when discussing human nature. Such an interdisciplinary conversation should not be restricted to the sciences alone. Instead, we should take into account perspectives from all academic fields, including philosophy, theology, and the humanities as a whole.
Such problems formed the background for Agust n Fuentes s Human Nature(s) Project: Assessing and Understanding Transdisciplinary Approaches to Culture, Biology and Human Uniqueness (2011-14). The John Templeton Foundation funded the project, whose aim was to provide a road map of how human nature is approached in different fields, from anthropology, philosophy, and theology to biology and psychology. The project culminated in an interdisciplinary conference held at the University of Notre Dame in April 2014. The aim of the conference was to address the various issues associated with human nature in the different discip