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On Human Nature

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2022

David L. Hull
David L. Hull*
Affiliation:
Northwestern University
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Extract

Generations of philosophers have argued that all human beings are essentially the same, that is, they share the same nature, and that this essential similarity is extremely important. Periodically philosophers have proposed to base the essential sameness of human beings on biology. In this paper I argue that if ‘biology’ is taken to refer to the technical pronouncements of professional biologists, in particular evolutionary biologists, it is simply not true that all organisms that belong to Homo sapiens as a biological species are essentially the same. If ‘characters’ is taken to refer to evolutionary homologies, then periodically a biological species might be characterized by one or more characters which are both universally distributed among and limited to the organisms belonging to that species, but such states of affairs are temporary, contingent, and relatively rare.

Type
Part I. Presidential Address
Information
PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association , Volume 1986 , Issue 2: Volume Two: Symposia and Invited Papers 1986 , 1986 , pp. 3 - 13
Copyright
Copyright © 1987 by the Philosophy of Science Association

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References

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