The Ascent of Man

A Philosophy of Human Nature

James F. Harris

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781412847605
• eBook ISBN: 9781351305587
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Medieval & Renaissance Philosophy

The Ascent of Man develops a comprehensive theory of human nature. James F. Harris sees human nature as an emergent property that supervenes a cluster of properties. Despite significant overlap between individuals that have human nature and those that are biologically human, the concept of human nature developed in this book is different. Whether biologically human or not, an individual may be said to possess human nature. This theory of human nature is called the"cluster theory."

Harris takes as his point of departurePlato's comment that in learning what a thing is we should look to the ways in which it acts upon or is acted upon by other things. He commits to a methodological naturalism and draws upon current views from the social and biological sciences. The cluster theory he develops represents one of the very few completely novel theories of human nature developed in the post-Darwin era. It will prove most useful in dealing with philosophical questions involving such contemporary issues as cloning, cybernetics, and the possibility of extraterrestrial life.

The fundamental conceptual issue is how plastic and elastic is the nature of human nature. Just how different might we imagine human beings to be and still be human in the sense that they still possess whatever it is that accounts for a unique nature? The theory of human nature developed in this book is a descriptive, dynamic, bottom-up, non-essentialist, naturalist theory. Harris is well versed in classical philosophy and contemporary behavioral science. He writes in a graceful, open-ended way that both educates and illuminates renewed interest in what it means to be human.

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Introduction: Theories of Human Nature

The title of this book, The Ascent of Man: A Philosophy of Human Nature, was chosen deliberately and unapologetically to indicate clearly its philosophical relationship to Charles Darwin’s The Descent of Man. While some might object to the generic use of “man” to refer to human beings, the subtitle should make clear that the purpose of this book is to develop a general theory of human nature. As will become clear momentarily, the title has also been chosen to capture an essential feature of the kind of theory of human nature that is developed in this book and to highlight a crucial difference between this theory and others. There are several ways of characterizing the different approaches that philosophers have taken to theorizing about human nature. The different kinds of theories regarding human nature overlap and crisscross in a number of different ways generating a significant variety of different possible approaches to the investigation of human nature. Except for a few very preliminary remarks here for the purposes of explaining the approach that is taken in this book and contrasting that approach with other ones, I will not discuss these different views or engage in lengthy or detailed criticisms of them.

One illuminating way of distinguishing different views of human nature is by juxtaposing descending views of human nature with ascending views. This distinction focuses attention on the division between those philosophers who generally favor what I call top-down views of human nature and those who favor bottom-up views. Perhaps ironically, given the title of Darwin’s work explaining the application of his theory of evolution based on natural selection to human beings, his use of “descent,” which trades upon the notion of biological descendant, does not represent the top-down view as much as it does the bottom-up view. Compare, for example, the claim that human beings descended from angels or from some other divine being(s). Such a top-down view of human beings descending—whether metaphorically or literally—from some other metaphysical realm or spiritual dimension does not trade at all upon the biological notion of descendent but rather, upon a much more metaphysically-laden notion of “originating from or in.” Top-down views of human beings thus generally originate within a dualistic metaphysical framework within which some spiritual or mental component of human beings is identified as being the human-making quality that is somehow implanted in the physical realm, i.e., this material world. Such views are ontologically generous to the point of being ontologically careless.

In the history of philosophy, Plato is a major figure who is representative of such a top-down view of human beings. His account of the nature of human beings is based upon the claim that each person has an immaterial soul, which existed prior to that person’s birth and which continues to exist eternally after that person’s death. Plato envisioned the soul as a metaphysical substance that is “imprisoned” in the physical body of a human being. The soul is the seat of reason and knowledge and is in constant conflict with the physical body. In his well-known, tripartite division of the soul, Reason controls and regulates the competing interests of Passion and Spirit. The important aspect of Plato’s theory of persons to emphasize at this point is that the human soul—the human-making aspect of human nature—metaphorically descends (or, perhaps for Plato, even literally descends) from the realm of the Forms. Human souls are imported from a different metaphysical world, the world of the Forms, and injected into physical bodies in this world to form human beings. Human nature is thus best regarded as a fragile and temporary amalgamation of the spiritual and the physical.

Neo-Platonism is responsible for importing a great deal of Plato’s theory of the nature of human beings into Christian theology. Although it is somewhat misleading to describe Christian theology as having a single, definite view of human nature given the wide spectrum along which a large number of widely diverse beliefs are spread, it is safe to attribute a certain, general view of human nature to mainstream Christianity. Although Christian theologians might disagree about whether human nature is basically good or inherently evil, basic Christian theology holds that man is made “in the image of God.” Plotinus’ reformulation of Plato is responsible for converting Plato’s notion of the Form of the Good into the notion of the One, an absolutely transcendent God from which all human souls (as well as two World Souls, all Goodness, and the rest of the physical universe, including Earth and the natural world) emanate. These neo-Platonist views—in particular, the emphasis on a metaphysical dualism and the ex nihilo origin of the universe—made their way easily into Christian theology. While there may be other more disputed ways in which human beings are said to be made in the image of God according to Christian theology (such as having free will, for example), the most fundamentally important way (and the least disputed way) is that a human being is said to possess something of the “spark of the divine” by having an immortal soul, which, in some fashion or other, survives death. The Christian view is another obvious top-down view of human nature, according to which one’s immortal soul, the essential aspect of human nature, is designed and created by God and then placed in this world. Human nature descends from God’s creation (or, to use Plotinus’ notion, human beings “emanate” from the One) in such a manner that what it is that makes human beings the unique creatures that we are originates in a metaphysically different world and then is imposed upon this natural world.

Descartes’ view of human beings based upon his famed “Cogito” and the characterization of himself as “a thinking thing,” and his thoroughgoing dualism with its complete, metaphysical separation of the immaterial mind from the physical body is perhaps one of the best-known and arguably one of the most influential top-down views in the history of philosophy. Famously, not only does Descartes claim that he exists as a mental substance, but he claims that this is the most epistemologically-certain claim possible, a claim that cannot possibly be false or even reasonably doubted. If in fact, Descartes can be absolutely certain that he exists while still doubting that he has a physical body, then his physical body, which is a part of the mechanistic, material world, must be incidental to his existence and hence his nature. A substance is identical with its essential attribute, and the only essential attribute of a mental substance is thinking, i.e., consciously experiencing, for Descartes. Hence, to be a human being is essentially to think. Furthermore, a Cartesian immaterial mind not only originates in a different metaphysical realm and is then implanted in a physical body in this world, but it remains metaphysically distinct and separate from the rest of the material world while it “occupies” a human body. This perpetual metaphysical separation is what Descartes calls “the Real Distinction between Mind and Body….” Explaining just what the connection is between the two and how the mind and body are able to interact, if indeed they do, has generated as much controversy and as much literature as perhaps the debate concerning human nature itself. Attempted possible explanations have run the gamut from occasionalism to pre-established harmony to epiphenomenalism; however, arguably, there is no satisfactory explanation to the problem of explaining the nature of the interaction of an immaterial mind and a physical body that has won wide philosophical acceptance that preserves the original Cartesian dualism.

In contrast to top-down views, what I call bottom-up views of human nature account for human nature through some kind of process(es) in this world whereby human beings develop or come to be the kind of creatures that we are. According to bottom-up views, human beings came into being at some point in our natural history as a result of such certain processes. There is significant disagreement about exactly what the process(es) might be through which human beings came to be human and exactly how the proposed development might actually have taken place. Generally, although not necessarily, bottom-up views are metaphysically naturalistic, and generally, although again not necessarily, such bottom-up views are non-theistic. There are theists, for example, that attempt to combine theism with evolutionary theory by proposing that some divine providence intervenes at certain points in the evolutionary process to produce desired results and that human beings are thus the result of both natural and divine processes. While such claims might be interesting from a theological point of view, the method here will be to attempt to provide an account of the nature of human nature without any such appeal to speculative, theological claims and thus to contrast bottom-up, naturalistic views with top-down, theistic views. The fundamental methodological commitment of this book is thus to naturalism.

Some philosophers who have favored the bottom-up approach on completely naturalistic grounds have emphasized biological processes while others have emphasized social ones.

One obvious example of a major figure in the history of philosophy that represents a bottom-up view and who accounts for human nature in terms of social processes is Karl Marx. Human nature, according to Marx, is to be accounted for simply in terms of “the totality of social relations” into which human beings enter. For Marx, it is thus society that determines and produces fundamental human nature, and this understanding of how human nature came to be what it is explains Marx’s political philosophy: change society and human beings (and presumably, human nature) will be changed.

The use of evolutionary psychology to explain human nature is also a bottom-up view. Evolutionary psychology, as a discipline, owes its inception to sociobiology and the work of E. O. Wilson. Sociobiology was based upon what proved to be the controversial (and now generally discredited) claim that certain social behaviors and patterns of social activities of human ancestors (originating mainly in the Pleistocene era) were based upon traits that would have favored survival and reproduction and were therefore selected for by natural selection. Taking general Darwinian evolution by natural selection as a given, evolutionary psychology developed from sociobiology by shifting the focus of attention from different traits and behavior to various “psychological modules” that collectively make up the human psyche. These different psychological modules, according to evolutionary psychology, have evolved because they provide psychological mechanisms that have allowed human organisms to adapt to various environmental problems and challenges by directing human behavior. The only important point to be made at the moment is that both sociobiology and evolutionary psychology are bottom-up theories that attempt to account for human nature as the result of certain natural processes. The claim is that human nature evolves or emerges as a result of these processes.

Top-down views have the distinct advantage over bottom-up views in providing a much clearer and more definitive claim about exactly what it is about human nature that accounts for the uniqueness of human beings. The uniqueness of human beings, according to top-down views, is usually accounted for in metaphysical terms by an infusion of some metaphysically distinct soul or spirit into the natural world from a different metaphysical realm. The advantage gained by top-down views thus will not be regarded as an advantage by naturalists favoring bottom-up theories of human nature since it comes with a high metaphysical price tag. Accounting for the uniqueness of human beings within a completely naturalistic metaphysics is more difficult since the characteristics that account for human nature—whatever they may be—must be characteristics within the same metaphysical domain shared with other living things. Thus, for example, distinguishing between human beings and other animals is simple, in one respect, according to Christian theology or Cartesian dualism: human beings have immortal souls (or immaterial minds), and other animals do not. Of course, the main difficulty with top-down views of human nature, including Plato’s view and Christian theology, is that such views are irrevocably tied to highly-speculative and widely-rejected metaphysical views. The history of the long disputes regarding such claims about metaphysically-distinct souls is evidence of the problems attached to top-down views.

Bottom-up views of human nature tend to be empirical. Indeed, the great advantage of bottom-up views of human nature is that they draw their support from observations, evidence, and data provided by the natural and social sciences so that such theories can be examined, analyzed, and evaluated in light of those scientific claims. This is, in fact, a description of the exact process whereby sociobiology both initially came to be proposed and then came to be regarded as a wrong-headed theory. It just does not square with the empirical data. However, if human beings are to be accounted for within a completely naturalistic metaphysical framework that puts human beings on the same metaphysical level as other animals, then one of the major tasks will be to provide an account that contains some compelling explanation of the unique position that human beings occupy in the natural world. This is one of the major objectives of this book.

A second way of categorizing different attempts to provide theoretical accounts of human nature is by distinguishing essentialist from non-essentialist accounts. Essentialist views of human nature account for human nature in terms of either a single quality or characteristic or some set of qualities, characteristics, or features that is/are both necessary and sufficient to account for the nature of a human being. Again, Descartes is an obvious example of a major figure from the history of philosophy who holds an essentialist view of human nature. “I am,” Descartes famously said, “a thinking substance—a thing that thinks.” According to his metaphysical dualism, which divides the universe into physical and mental substances, human beings are the single, unique place where the two different kinds of substances are conjoined. However, other aspects of human nature and other qualities or features that a person might possess having to do with one’s physical body or other aspects of the physical universe are accidental and non-essential. The essential and defining part of human nature—the necessary and sufficient condition that sets human beings off not only from other animals but from every other thing in the mechanical universe—is, for Descartes, the existence of an immaterial, mental substance in which essentially private mental events occur. It was this view of a metaphysically-distinct mind occupying a physical body in a mechanistic universe that Gilbert Ryle derisively referred to as the “Ghost in the Machine” in The Concept of Mind.

There are many other examples from the history of philosophy of essentialist views of human nature. Some such views are teleological, claiming that the essence of human beings consists in having a certain purpose or aim, e.g., seeking happiness or seeking a beatific union with God. Other essentialist views account for the essence of human nature in terms of reason, moral agency, or free will. Most essentialist theories of human nature are top-down views in that the essence of human nature is usually attributed to a metaphysically distinct, non-natural ingredient–either spiritual, mental, or teleological. Top-down, essentialist theories, which identify some non-natural aspect of human nature as essential, also usually regard that non-natural essence as unalterable. Human beings are what we are because of a certain essence, like it or not; so we simply are who we are, and that is the end of the matter. However, some essentialist views take a bottom-up approach. Jean-Paul Sartre, for example, is noted for claiming that “existence precedes essence.” For Sartre, the human condition and the fact that human beings are forced into making free choices of great consequence determine the essence of human nature; so, uniquely human actions produce a uniquely human essence.

Non-essentialist theories of human nature do not identify any single feature or set of features that are essential to human beings being the unique creatures that we are. Different features might be emphasized to a greater or lesser extent as contributing to human nature, but, on non-essentialist views, human beings are not thought to have a single, unalterable essence. Non-essentialist views tend to be empirical, drawing from evidence and data supplied by the natural and social sciences. The results of the scientific study of the brain by neuroscience, as well as the study of human development and human culture by anthropology and sociology, are gradually and constantly becoming more complete and detailed, and our understanding of the different features—both biological and cultural—as well as the different ways in which those features contribute to human nature—are constantly changing. At one time, for example, the size of the entire brain was taken to be a significant contributing factor to human nature, but it is not now. Some now take the development of the cerebral cortex and cognitive intelligence as the essential feature of human nature (a scientific version of Aristotelianism), but there is significant disagreement as to how important the size of the cerebral cortex is to the complex functions that take place there. At one time, anthropologists attached great weight to the fact that human beings use tools. However, then it was discovered that other animals use tools as well. Then, social scientists claimed that human beings are unique in that we both make and use tools. But we now have learned that other animals both make and use tools also. For non-essentialists, the different qualities or features, whether biological or cultural, that collectively account for human nature tend to be moving targets. Careful attention must be paid to what the scientific evidence is from the latest and most highly-regarded scientific discoveries and experiments. An important characteristic of the approach taken here is an attempt to draw from the most salient information from the most recent and the most highly regarded scientific evidence regarding human beings to try and assemble a composite view of human nature.

On the far side of the spectrum on which essentialism and non-essentialism both lie is the postmodernist claim (made, for example by Richard Rorty) that there is no single, ahistorical or acultural human nature but that different human natures are culturally constructed by different societies in different places at different times. Such a view might be called anti-essentialist. Although non-essentialists deny that there is a single essence of human nature, they still maintain that there is such a thing as human nature that is, as least to some extent, ahistorical and acultural. Thus, according to non-essentialist views of human nature, although there may not be an identifiable essence of human nature, there are still some qualities or features in terms of which I may be said to have the same “nature” as Socrates or other individuals from different cultures and different times. Anti-essentialists such as Rorty maintain, in contrast, that there is no single quality or feature or specific set of qualities or features that characterizes anything that is identifiable as a nature of human beings that is transhistorical or transcultural, i.e., no human nature exists independently of a culture that constructs that nature in terms of certain qualities or features. Postmodernists thus maintain that human nature (as well as such epistemological notions as truth and human reason) is constructed by the cultures in which human beings live and does not exist independently of those cultures.

Although there can be reasoned debates between essentialists and non-essentialists, anti-essentialists take reasoned debate “off the table” since their extreme, relativistic position is usually more the result of politics than it is of rational arguments. There is no doubt that the social sciences have identified a wide variety of different traits and behaviors from different cultures that are all human traits and behaviors, and that these differences have led to different understandings of what it means to be human. However, the fact that such differences exist and such different understandings of the nature of human beings exist does not prove that everything human is socially constructed. On the contrary, there can be no doubt that nature imposes upon different cultures certain limitations within which each culture operates. The existence of such limitations does not mean that there is a biologically-determined essence, but it does mean that human nature is not completely or infinitely malleable. One of the crucial tasks of a theory of human nature is to sort out, to some satisfactory degree of preciseness, exactly to what extent human nature is fixed by our biology and to what extent it is not. Even given the differences that exist amongst different human beings in different cultures of the world, there is still a difference between those different human beings and other animals, and even given those same differences, there is still some sense in terms of which we want to say that those different individual human beings are the same kind of creatures as were earlier human beings. Identifying, explaining, and defending the exact qualities or features in terms of which such comparisons are made is the substance of the theory of nature developed in this book. While I do not discuss anti-essentialism explicitly later in this book, the view developed here, taken as a whole, is intended as a gene...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• 1 Introduction: Theories of Human Nature
• 2 The Cluster Theory of Human Nature
• 3 The Natural World and Human Nature
• 4 Human Biology and Human Nature
• 5 Human Experience and Human Nature
• 6 “Supernatural” Experience and Human Nature
• 7 Material Culture and Human Nature
• 8 The Human Brain and Human Nature
• 9 Human Society, Human Culture, and Human Nature
• 10 Conclusion
• Selected Bibliography
• Index