Fair enough … if you want to approach the question from a linguistics standpoint (Noam Chomsky did great work in this area btw), okay sure. But typically when philosophers talk about human nature, they’re getting at something much more comprehensive (although I’m not minimizing the importance of language).
We know attributes of human nature. We certainly know a considerable amount about our biological nature. We enjoy sex, we need to eat, we need hydration and oxygen, we reproduce via sexual reproduction, etc. But again, this isn’t typically what philosophers are getting at when they try to describe human nature. They usually try and reduce it to one primary feature (like a will to power), or describe things they postulate have the most meaning (virtue or being or whatever). But I’m not even saying we don’t have a will to power (although I do question whether it’s a basal instinct) or virtue is unimportant or Heidegger’s being (what it means for a human to exist) is b/s (I love all those ideas).
A truly comprehensive definition of human nature would be predictive, and outcomes would match the predictions. It cannot be done via historicism, there’s too much evolutionary variation (although I love the way Foucault used history, but I digress), to much environmental variation, etc.
Anyway, not my intention to belittle philosophy (I love philosophy), but I do believe it has limitations (and in many areas, it’s no substitute for science, which IMO includes this question).
With the neanderthal issue … it is settled. We possess ~20% of neanderthal DNA (I’m a molecular biologist, and when you sequence DNA and find that 20% of our DNA is from neanderthals, it’s impossible to explain it any other way). I mean, 20% of 3 billion base pairs is 600 million base pairs. So the probability that this DNA came from any other source is so close to zero, it’s not even worth considering. And humans didn’t always marry …
And of course you’re entitled to your view, but is language the be all and end all when it comes to human nature? It is true that no other animal has the ability to create language as humans do (although they can “communicate” with each other, communication is distinct from language). But even if you did want to zero in on language, we have so much to learn in that area, I don’t know how anyone could think that we have it all figured out. But maybe I should elaborate on my position. We can list the factors that we need to better understand in order to gain a more complete picture of human nature (I personally would include more than just language), but we currently lack a comprehensive understanding of those factors (and again, language is no exception). So maybe we’re just defining the problem in different ways?
In my view, saying we have human nature “all” figured out … is to have predictive ability. Someone like Nietzsche might say we have a will to power, someone like Kropotkin might say we’re more inclined towards cooperation. Yet, we see examples of both all the time, and so no single rule seems to fit all circumstances. Obviously, much depends on conditions. You see different outcomes under conditions of abundance vs conditions of scarcity (as just one example). Even more complicating, different types of humans evolved under different circumstances. If you live in a harsh primitive environment, being smart enough to build good shelter will probably both suit your ability to survive and your ability to reproduce, hence, after several generations, those type of traits will tend to predominate. Also, cooperation would obviously suit survival under harsh conditions. So tribes that are better at cooperation will have a greater chance of survival. Peoples who evolved in milder climates, who had a reduced need to cooperate, may not perform as well in that area (but other traits may have been selected for). And of course, by now there’s been so much interbreeding between different peoples, it further clouds the picture.
So we wind up with huge variation in these sort of traits. And these are the type of characteristics that have always been the subject of discussions and scholarship centering on human nature, throughout the history of philosophy. So I really don’t see how my position here is all that controversial?
Taking a very ambitious view towards science, maybe one day, systems biology (with the help of very powerful computers) will be able to not only figure this out, but even possibly have the ability to predict evolutionary progression under different conditions (and how those different scenarios will manifest in terms of human behavior, sociology, intellect, and so on). From the standpoint of evolutionary biology, our ability to predict the progression of evolution is really crude right now. From the standpoint of systems biology, right now we’re at the point where we can barely model a tissue system or really small animal (we’re really only beginning to learn how to do this), so we have a long way to go
Taking a subject like linguistics. To really understand it we’d want to understand the relationship between our language and our neurology. We’d want to build computational neural networks (which is a painstaking thing to do, you have to image the brain during different types of speech, narrow regions you want to focus on, tag neurons, which is incredibly complicated, and oh yeah, the average humans has about 100 billion neurons, although it’s conceivable that we could create algorithms which would automate the process, but we would still need to collect huge amounts of data through conventional means before we could do this), and to top it off, even if we accomplished all those things (which would be amazing in itself), we still wouldn’t be done. We’d want to understand the developmental and genomic aspects to this, and then (MAYBE) we’d have the power to start making predictions. Of course, regardless of what we do, in all likelihood, the best we’ll ever be able to do is understand the probability that certain events will or will not occur.
As an aside, I wouldn’t use the term “speech” … language is the more appropriate term (after all, mute people are just as human as you and I).
Sure, it’s one of possibly many differences between humans and other creatures. We could add dexterity, there are many skills and arts only humans and our opposable thumbs can perform. There’s probably a few other fundamentals, but i think we can round it all into one; what is different about humans is what human nature is. Everything that other creatures can also do, is part of a more general class. Not forgetting that animals are usually much better at surviving in the wild, and most predators are better at it than humans without weapons. In fact we humans majoritively would think about killing before doing it, so reflection and the considered mind is a big part of it too.
I think you are right about language, all animals use language even where rudimentary. There seems to be less of an ability to be detached the further down the brain scale you go. This i believe is where the fundamental difference lies. Nature is nature driven, humans are a bit that but also self driven.
Theoretically, if there are humanoids/aliens out there with an even greater capacity to be detached, they would be ‘more human’ than us!?
This would put each of us on a hierarchic scale where some people are; less detached = more driven = less human, and at the other end, more detached = less driven = more human.
E.g. Hitler is more of a killer/predator and thus more driven, more like nature, less human. Gandhi… Etc.
That tough guy down the pub who all the working class people respect, would also be less detached, more driven, less human.
If all humanity became more detached, then humanity would become more human!
I expect the beginnings of human language pre-dates fire considerably? it no doubt helped in expression, the idea of creation and of changing nature ~ which humans do far more extensively than any other creature.
Language is a very much elaborated form of communication (information system) - there is an interdependence between language and communication (information system).
Language serves and supports thinking - there is an interdependence between language and thinking.
1 + 2) Language is a cultural tool - there is an interdependence between language and culture.
Without language humans would almost exclusively be like animals: (1) they would not speak but merely communicate like animals; (2) they could not have philosophy and other elaborated systems of thinking; (1 + 2) they would not have their own cultural tool, the typical human tool for culture.
If you are capable of using fire, then you are powerful and can defend yourself against all animals, sit at your bonfire and talk with other hunters about the hunt, about the past and the future, thus you have more leisure, more luxury, and this gives you and your culture a push in all directions, especially in spritual / intellectual directions, and then a feedback from all those directions.
But nevertheless: the human nature is not only the human language but the whole human culture; and merely the rest of about 2% is a pure natural aspect of the human nature (these 2% are not really few - as we know, especially from genetics).
You could also say that language is one way we express our nature, but we do think in terms of language (although I would argue that perhaps the sciences are able to transcend this), and our ability to learn language is innate (you could put an infant in just about any environment, as long as the infant is exposed to language, they will learn to speak and understand it). But when philosophers talk about human nature, they tend to speak of our “state of nature” (are we naturally egalitarian, are we naturally savage, are we naturally competitive, etc.)? These are features that don’t necessarily require complex language. Indeed we see these sort of traits in other animals (compare the behavior of the chimpanzee to the bonobo). In fact there was a recent experiment that suggests altruism is even common among rats.
The anarchist zoologist Peter Kropotkin long ago established the idea that animals, under conditions of resource abundance, are very cooperative and altruistic. But I think you get closer to our nature when you observe how we behave under pressure (I mean, if you give a criminal millions of dollars and they decide to retire to a tropical beach somewhere and give up their life of crime, does that mean they’re truly reformed, should we confuse their newly found wealth with good character, no … we would just say their greed has been at least temporarily satiated, but their “nature” remains greedy and narcissistic nonetheless). I think it’s instructive to observe how we panic when attacked, how we go at each others throats during tough economic times, how easy it is to inspire xenophobia and hate, etc. etc. But I still resist the temptation to say Hobbes was right, because I just think his explanation was too simplistic.
Language has an innate and a non-innate feature. The capability of language learning is an innate feature, but if the environment of the said infant is without language, then this infant will not learn any language, and if an adult has never had any language experiences, then the language learning is almost impossible for this adult. So there is a critical point of time as a border for the capability of language learning. The capability of language learning gets lost (the older a human becomes the more the capability of language learning gets lost), generally and especially, if there is no language environment, no possibility of language exercises.
That’s all true except that we’re beginning to learn that adulthood is not the handicap to learning that we once believed, which even applies to language. Ironically, a recent study indicates that adults struggle with learning a new language because they try harder than children (is that weird or what)?
But it remains true that learning a second language after puberty is more difficult than learning multiple languages as a young child (because of interference from the native language and localization of the language function to a specialized part of the brain, and it seems like the more recent science is leaning towards neural changes as the most important factor). However, there’s really no reason why a 60 year old cannot learn language just as easily as a 30 year old (in both cases, the individuals are well past full maturation of the brain), although a 60 year old has a higher probability of suffering from a disorder that debilitates cognitive function (but if both are healthy, then the only real difference in learning capacity will be IQ). The 60 year old may have less energy, but the 30 year old is hornier and more distracted (so it could wash out either way, and it really depends on the person, motivation level, etc).
The workload and the speed of a little child’s language learning are not to top after the age of that little child who learns the language for the first time.
Nope.
A dolphin cannot talk about human things as it inhabits a completely different expereince.
They say that all familial pods of Orca has unique languages, and that their brains are more keenly attuned to emotional communication than humans. With there communications systems they can perform novel and very clever hunting techniques that show a level of commincation and understanding that human are incapable of understanding.
I don’t know, if you swim along side one or splash around, then you are consciousness sharing a similar experience but in different shaped objects/bodies. If you gave it a fish it might say thank you! A feral human will try to act like it’s adoptive creature parents.
Secondly language describes objects and behaviours in the world, and a talking dolphin would share the same world.
Being around a dolphin [or dog, cat etc] with the same linguistic potential as humans would surely derive a shared language to some degree?
Human nature, how to paint a pretty picture of a naked ugly vicious destructive beast in the absence of objective purpose or meaning within the universe devoid of all caring or understanding.
Yes, humanists of every stripe, describe to us what human nature is.
Let’s hear the social propaganda angle of it as its all you have to go on.
It’s too bad he had to water down his philosophy at the time to make it more paleable for a puritan Christian zealous majority out of fear of religious persecution because then he could of written truly even more about what he thought of human nature without restrictions during the 16th century.
He had to keep everything religiously PC during that period of time towing the party line.
No, I don’t. Yes, I would include myself into that equation also.
From my point of view, it’s a savage animal species trying to extrapolate that it is somehow better than what it really is and because there is nobody else around to criticize it all levels of bullshit is articulated to paint a rose on itself when all there is weeds.
It’s like taking a plate of dog shit and then going to some sort of bullshit extrapolation as to why it is a five star meal.
