Are people inherently anything?

Philosophy Forums Philosophy
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What provokes peoples behaviour?

Do people have a range of potential behaviour patterns which are limited relative to thier environment,capacities and awareness? Does this rule out ultimate freedom of will?

I know we have certain reflex acti and well engrained patterns of behaviour which are necessary for survival(needs of water/air/food)which are beyond our control.

My question is whether a problem arises when people try to extend the usage of the term “human nature” to include the stereotyping of individuals as a certain way.

By his nature he was compelled to…its the nature of the rational man to…

In this view a persons nature is a set of charectoristics that a person may fufill a posteri as opposed to an innate tendancy to act a certain way in a certain context.

Its the nature of a billiard ball to have inertia and resist movement unless acted upon and being massive objects also its likewise the nature of people to resist movement(aside from our obvious capacity for self propulsion) but to undersand the nature of humans we must understand what determines the elf propelled action of humans relative to thier surroundings.

Social and cultural norms, engrained patterns of behaviour as well as the vast hierarchy of apriori held values meld into a symphony of will and only after assesing the immediate environment and the limited range of potential actions a decision is made as to which course of action is most benefitial and most likely for success…after looking at such factors that may preceed the affirmation or realization of any will, we can see that ones will is tightely constrained by ones history and hence not very free at all.

When looking at the philosophy of a Jean Paul Satre in its optimistic and very free view of human imagination,will and capacity for change in the individual, i turn to cases of drug addiction and can’t help think of people as rats going back to the feeders almost devoid of choice and humorously aware to the point of humility of they’re lack of will, willing victims to a fatalist/behaviourist account of human nature.

Then i think of Nietzche with his thought experiment of a world of only will-Is drug addiction not meerly the acceptance of one will as more favorable than another(the will for a sober mind)?—

The fatalist lacks integrity and responsibility, in blatend disregard for the conscious choice involved, either by lack of capacity or willfull ignorence they attribute the cause of thier behaviour to nature as if they were not the active part of nature making nature subside and yield results…

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To your question I would say that men are inherently nothing.

( In the void of everything man is a animal amongst a million others that exists on a rock that is spinning in outerspace.)

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Well its a bit strong to say we are inherently nothing…we are inherently sentient,mortal

To what degree does our sentient nature play a role in determining future behaviour?

Can we be free and determined at the same time? or as Sartre says can we actually form the image of ourselves anew everyday?

to what degree does addiction counter this argument(in the biological or psycholgical conditioning sense)

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Behavorial genetics.

we know that brothers raised apart are as similiar as brothers raised together, we know that adopted ‘brothers’ raised together as statistically as similiar as strangers, and twins, we see even closer similitiaries yet.

These aren’t slight ‘coincidences’ men are inherently a lot of things because of their genes, but genes can be turned on or off by environment and environment tends to give genes information on what type of gene-complexes to set up.

Its not a one-way street, but the genes account for statistically more and they enable the whole process anyway.

(That is on top of all the stuff that all humans share because of the genes)

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Would you say that the will is more than behavioural tendencies that arise in relation to the immediate awareness of ones environment?

Is there not an assesment of the means/faculties with which we would carrie out any patterns of behaviour we are aware of? A hesitation between assessing a potential behaviour and attempting it. Could this period of reflexion before action be responsible for us announcing our freedom with regard to our will?

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I think I know what you’re asking and I don’t know what else it could be, what are you thinking about?

A lot of the time’s our brains unconsciously gather the information and we arrive at a decision without ever consciously assessing the information. That being said, its really hard to talk about free-will in relation to genetics.

Our genetics give us the adaptations that let us experience the ability to see evitable outcomes and manuever towards goals or whatever, but we can’t work outside the genes and we’re on a lot of invisible strings.

Say, a lot of reasons people do things is unconscious genetic stratedgy, is that free-will? people don’t choose whom they are attracted to (male/females) by free-will and in a lot of situations its the same.

A person may n ot conscious decide to crush a dog’s throat if it jumped at them, instead reacted instinctively, in a lot of complex scenerios this is true. but it doesn’t take away from our ability to avoid things, which is what free-will is about really.

Can we talk about people who have an impulsion to murder that they can’t control, can we talk about ‘free’ or ‘will’ in this case? Probably not really and in a lot of ways i guess that will/freedom is limited even in normal humans.

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I agree that alot of behaviours are unconscious(regulation of organs/glands) and uncontrolled(spinal reflex reactions/ focus of ears and eyes to sudden movements or sounds/ gag reflux) and obviously in these cases there is no true freedom in behaviour .

Yet, boredom or free time leaves oppurtunity for motive to rear its head and to what degree do genes or biology regulate the appearence and manipulation of motive into will and action?

I would say biology would have more pull in the appearence of motive(strains of behaviour/personality) than the decesion as whether one should act on any such whim of mind. Brain wave patterns are outside a humans range of control outside of experimental procedures/ experimental drugs.

A side note though is that our genes are to a degree responsible for a part of the development of structures in the brain that allow sensation / perception, memory / action and hence play a big role in setting the table for potential ranges of behaviour which can be undertaken.

Genes are probably responsible for similarities between humans setting our nature to overgeneralize…but how we manipulate that set of genes if likely responsible for our differences. Look at the example of africans who lived in an area of intense sunlight relative to europeans and north americans. I read that the pigment was an adaptation by those who migrated north and thus no longer needed darker pigment to combat the bombardment of vimitin C in UV rays.(or is that at all true?)

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I will say that men are inherent in the act of survival, to what end however is unimportant to me.

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I guess that people do have these limitations, but the smallest number of potential human actions is every action performed by everyhuman in the history of the species.

So its not like because we have predispositions/other factors influencing us beside consciousness that we have a small set of possible behaviors.

The Adapted Mind, - The Psychological Foundations of Culture

JOHN TOOBY AND LEDA COSMIDES

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A question, Joker: Men are inherently nothing, or men are nothing inherently?

In response to the question of muscular reflex, I’m assuming the situation is thus:

Human being is standing, facing a dog, which leaps at them. Human being has both the nerve capacity and the muscular strength to react violently to the dog’s approach. But, the dog is moving too fast for the human being’s conscious mind to apprehend its attack before reacting. Thus, the reaction must be controlled by the unconscious mind - I would assume theta wave, reptilian brain, since it generally deals with reflex action? Correct me if I’m wrong on that. In any case, no conscious choice. It’s erroneous to assume, though, that the reflex action in this situation would be to destroy the canine. In a sufficiently dog-loving and/or detached human being, the reflex system may or may not see the dog’s leap as a threat. On the other hand, a completely benign action by the dog, say, leaping very quickly to knock over homo sapiens and lick him lovingly, may prompt a reflexive violent response, arguably an incorrect one. On yet another hand, the human may perceive an imminent threat to physical existence, but have an unconscious mind conditioned to prefer allowing the body to be destroyed than to react violently.

Long story short. Does repeated conditioning of the unconscious mind to respond in unconscious situations count as free will?

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People may claim this, but if an individual had a baseball bat and a charging bear ran at them, theres three choices or routes of action: Frozen with fear, two: flight, third: fight. I don’t think someone can manipulate their unconscious t hrough society enough to overcome those powerful urges when the time comes.

And if they do they’re mental architecture was probably malfunctioning.

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What about Gandhi?

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To what degree would the owners knowledge of the dogs history influence his quick reaction to lunging dog?

If it was a dog known to atttack, if it was making aggressive jestures before the lunge ect.

Is the will anything more than applied awareness and muscle memory?I am of the opinion that we have a hierarchy of potential patterns of behaviour rooted in our firmly help beliefs.

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Well put. I think the next question there is, does a set of self-influencable (influenzable?) beliefs established over time and called upon in moments of stress qualify as free will? Or in other words, is free will less a matter of momentary choice than programming over time, called upon in each moment and revised based on outcome?

Or is this an illusion, and is this set of programming dictated purely by circumstances and the aforementioned outcome, purely rote programming? ‘Man learns to attack dog if jumped at by dog EXCEPT when previously programmed with perfectly altruistic Christ/PETA nature.’

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Human instincts are an instance where we exhibit no control over behaviour, every response by every human should be to pull away a hand from something shocking it or burning it, this is almost like an instentaneous will or intuition; an immediate association made with stimuli and a necessary pattern of behaviour. In these cases though we don’t have the time to reflect on different courses of action or the need it is immediately made present to our senses that something is being damaged and action is unconscious or unwilled.

One could say that the reaction to a flame or shock is just one of the many assumed best courses of action that one has stored in memory with regard to the immediate environment. Just as one doesn’t have to reason what is the cause and nature of the growling coming from ones stomach and assess in general what one might do to stop or prevent it, you don;t need to reason the cause and cure of the burning or shocking.

So i would agree that we have a great deal of behaviour which is determined by the structure of our bodies but we also have free time in which all motivation is originating from within onesself as opposed to originating from the environment(although all internal motivation is in reference to environmental variables)

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Past knowledge of environmental factors can come into play. However when I see a few shrubs moving in shadows and I see a dog as if there were a real dog there, my brain connects links which aren’t there to respond to potential agency because doing so economically in the face of ‘maybe-danger’ is a survival value. I don’t consciously attempt to see a dog or a face in the moon, I just do.

If a dog attacked me out of the corner of my eye and I didn’t get a good look at what was attacking me, I would and no one with normal cognition (No matter their personal beliefs about religion, even ghandi himself)

Would fight back, not only would they fight back but viciously fight back like a crazed animal. Of course no one wants to believe that of themselves, and of course people would want to believe their ideaological beliefs could overpower their instincts, but the fact is everyone is either fighting or trying to escape, especially if pain is envolved.

No matter what you say about non-violence when you have a wild animal leaping at you or chewing on the bone in your arm, reservations about violence dissapear, people react faster then conscious choice.

Now if you had a few seconds to assess the threat people can react instinctively with known knowledge, knowledge can change how your instincts drive you to act.

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In that very same sense our ability to think rationally and the nature of our mental cognition is instinct. People don’t have to learn by trial and error in creating a language or being able to think rationally (well at least all the time) We can rationally project and don’t have to ‘learn’ how to do it. (in a basic sense, people’s accuracy at doing so is different and environmental factors can influence that greatly) but the basic capability.
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But then again, a human being could view the aforementioned dog jumping out at him as not a threat, despite whether or not the dog was chewing bites out of his arm. Masochism? Sadism? Madness? A man stood in front of a tank in Tiananmen (sp) Square and did not get out of the way. Buddhist monks sit naked in the snow meditating. Call it insanity if you want, but is it not free will to not react?

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“Is human nature” That’s what my friend Franky used to say. It’s what he said about Aushwitz, which he survived.