by VanDoodah » Tue Aug 04, 2009 2:28 pm
I'm not entirely sure just how meaningful discussions about human nature are. It (human nature) seems to me to be a scientific question (unless one happens to be religious, in which case one will regard it as a theological one), and science hasn't really told us a great deal about human nature yet. And, of course, in order to claim that human beings are generally good (or evil, for that matter), then one has to get into a massive discussion about the nature of morality, as well as bear the burden of proof required with such a claim.
Whatever morality is, I believe that it is innate. It was long thought, especially by empiricists like John Locke and David Hume, that human beings are born with blank minds - tabula rasa - and that therefore there is no human nature deeper than the physio-biological traits we share. Of course, most people have now rejected that extreme empiricist view, thanks to advances in modern science. Noam Chomsky, for example, has proven that human beings have an innate capacity for language, that different languages differ in their formats and constructions only slightly, and that the differences between different languages are learned at an early age. Well, I believe that morality is an evolutionary phenomenon, and that it is something innate within us all. For example, the vast majority of human beings would agree that the proposition "Raping babies is wrong". When questioned why, they would simply state that it is obvious. I think morality consists of various truisms, but because it is not an axiom system, moral values can sometimes conflict. Also, certain learned morals - religious morals, for example - can account for some of the moral debates of our time.
I also think that most issues which are generally regarded as moral issues are actually factual issues. Take, for example, the debate about abortion. Some people argue that life is given by God at the moment of conception, and that therefore we have no right to intervene and take that life. However, other people, especially non-religious people, argue that life doesn't begin at the moment of conception, that the fetus is entirely reliant on the mother and that a woman should be sovereign over her own body. This reinforces my earlier point that morality is not an axiom system. Here one can see perhaps two things: one is a clash of values; namely, female sovereignty versus the fetus' right to life. But the major issue is the fact that both sides - both pro-life and pro-choice - make factual presumptions that the other side doesn't accept. What is really at stake in many supposedly moral issues - such as the nature of humanity and abortion - are the factual presumptions underlying each argument. I think that it is important to realise that many moral issues arise simply because of a different approach to the facts, or pseudo-facts, in many cases.
With regards to human nature, I do not believe that we have enough scientific knowledge to understand it just yet, and maybe we never will. On the one hand, one can see violence, authoritarianism, hatred etc - just look at Nazi Germany. But on the other hand, one can see peace, solidarity, a will to help humanity progress - just look at Martin Luther King Junior, Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela etc. So, it depends where you look, but I think that either argument (for or against man's innately good nature) must rely on a selective use and slanted interpretation of what evidence we have. Plus, the evidence would be almost exclusively sociological, and sociology is not exactly a precise science.
Maybe the atheistic existentialists are right, and, as Sartre put it, "Man is nothing else but that which he makes of himself".
