On Human Nature

On Human Nature

Jose-Miguel Rosillo-Cevallos

On Human Nature

By Jose-Miguel Rosillo-Cevallos

In “A Response To Machery” (forthcoming), Colin Lewis argues that the nomological notion of human nature fails to fulfill its purpose due to a series of faulty assumptions. Lewis starts by introducing the problem that the nomological notion is meant to address – namely, the need for a non-essentialist conception of human nature.

He then presents the key features of the nomological notion, followed by a critique of its clarity and utility. And, after providing a more detailed examination of the nomological notion’s weaknesses, Lewis concludes, as he set out to do, that this conception of human nature is not a good one.

The driving question, the one underlying Machery’s proposal and Lewis’ rejection of it, is that of what it means to be human, and answers to this question tend to be encapsulated by the term ‘human nature’. This term, in other words, is supposed to establish our shared identity; its purpose is to remind us of what we have in common by communicating a conception of who ‘we’ are. Thus, in evaluating the academic discourse in which people like Machery and Lewis are involved, it is important to first acknowledge the assumption that it is valuable to ask, and attempt to answer, this question: who are we? The reasons behind this assumption can therefore be set aside, at least for now.

Tied to this first premise is the idea that it is possible to meaningfully answer this most introspective of questions; the idea that there is something the term ‘human nature’ can legitimately capture. And whether or not it is in fact conceivable for the question to be answered depends on the criteria we use to distinguish between existence and nonexistence.

One alternative is essentialism, which takes essence as the criterion for existence.

An essence is a distinct set of necessary and sufficient conditions. Therefore, essentialism contends that for something to exist is for it to be a unique unity; that ‘the what’ is at least ‘a why’ and ‘a how’, and at most1 also ‘a when’ and ‘a where’2.

I take purpose (‘a why’) and form (‘a how’) as more fundamental than time (‘a when’) and space (‘a where’) because those first two tend to be understood as more readily knowable than those last two; that is, the former are often taken to be capable of existing in the mind alone whereas the latter are commonly said to require the addition of the external world as context. And even though I do not necessarily subscribe to the mind-world distinction, I am unsure if I should, and I find it in this case preferable to err on the side of common sense, which assumes it to be a valid distinction.

2 Notice the definite articles accompanying each of these terms (‘the’ and ‘a’). Only ‘the’ implies both uniqueness and unity, which means terms accompanied by ‘a’ do not exist as essences, and must instead exist as non-essences. This is significant only in that it shows how difficult it can be to avoid contradiction when it comes to discussing existence; after all, how can a ‘something’ be comprised of ‘nothings’? A collection of nothings should amount to a single nothing. Yet how could more than one ‘something’ constitute another ‘something’? That would mean that each of the constituent somethings –including the relationship(s) between them– is unnecessary and insufficient on its own, with only the something that is the collection amounting to a necessary and sufficient something, and thus the only true something in the equation, insofar as it is relevant to itself.

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On Human Nature

Jose-Miguel Rosillo-Cevallos

Another alternative is non-essentialism, which rejects essence as the criterion for existence. Since non-essentialism is thus a negative account of existence, it is not unreasonable to demand that it is incomplete without an accompanying positive account, but one could also argue that a simple negative account is sufficient, although we would then be forced to drop the deep-rooted belief that nothing is not something, because we would have to claim that the absence of a definition can serve the same purpose as the presence of one, and this seems to crumble into contradiction. Whether or not there is such a thing as human nature, then, seems to depend firstly on whether or not the principle of non-contradiction must apply. If it does, the reasoning goes, then the only alternative is essentialism; and, if it doesn’t, only non-essentialism remains.

Both Machery and Lewis reject essentialist accounts of human nature. In particular, Lewis points to David Hull’s three obstacles for essentialism: “members of a species tend to display incredible diversity; seldom can one locate any trait or traits that are universally distributed throughout the species and also exclusive to that species; even if one does, it is unlikely that said trait or traits will remain characteristic of the species over time” (Lewis, 2016). Since these three obstacles are simply a rephrased dismissal of the existence of a distinct set of necessary and sufficient conditions to define a species, we are left with the task of constructing a non-essentialist notion of human nature, which is precisely what Machery sets out to do.

He calls it the nomological notion, and it looks to overcome Hull’s hurdles by defining human nature as “the set of properties that humans tend to possess as a result of the evolution of their species” (Machery, 2008). This allows for the two-pronged problem that “seldom can one locate any trait or traits that are universally distributed throughout the species and also exclusive to that species” since it only requires that humans tend to possess a particular set of properties, such that not every human must possess every trait and not every trait must be possessed by every human, just as not every non-human need not fail to possess every trait and not every trait must be not possessed by every nonhuman. Furthermore, Machery’s definition makes room for Hull’s third complication, the one about how “it is unlikely that said trait or traits will remain characteristic of the species over time”, by qualifying that the entire human property set must share a human evolutionary history.

But Lewis rejects Machery’s proposal on the grounds that it reduces the concept of human nature to meaninglessness. As he puts it: “one might persist in questioning the usefulness of nomological human nature in light of the fact that developing any list of traits that most humans possess will either be infinitely expanding or simply not pick out anything of biological worth” (Lewis, 2016). In other words, Lewis holds that the nomological notion’s greatest strength is also its greatest weakness – namely, the fact that it refrains from drawing a clear boundary between what makes us human and what does not. Lewis thus implicitly affirms an essentialist conception of existence for humanity. If there is an answer to the question of who we are, Lewis contends, it cannot be one that merely affirms who we are not, as Machery would have it. Yet Lewis also holds that there is in fact no positive conception of human nature, since he denies the essentialist position.

We are therefore left with nothing but the original question. And I suggest it’s all we really need anyway. The absence of a theoretical answer does not preclude the presence of a practical one. The question of who we are is one to which we can respond only by showing ourselves what we can do, and this only by doing it.

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