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SUMMARY:Why We Disagree about Human Nature - Speaker to be confirmed
DTSTART:20151210T090000Z
DTEND:20151210T180000Z
UID:TALK60509@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Speaker to be confirmed
DESCRIPTION:Is human nature something that the natural and social sciences
  aim to describe\, or is it a pernicious fiction? What role\, if any\, doe
 s ‘human nature’ play in directing and informing scientific work? Can 
 we talk about human nature without invoking—either implicitly or explici
 tly—a contrast with human culture? It might be tempting to think that th
 e respectability of ‘human nature’ is an issue that divides natural an
 d social scientists along disciplinary boundaries\, but the truth is more 
 complex. Some evolutionary theorists have enthusiastically embraced ‘hum
 an nature’\, while others have rejected it. Many social scientists have 
 explicitly rejected it\, while implicitly gesturing towards universal ‘c
 ognitive schemas’. Philosophers\, meanwhile\, have recently put forward 
 a variety of suggestions for how\, if at all\, we might make sense of this
  divisive notion.\n\nThe speakers at this conference will put forward a se
 lection of the very different answers to these questions about human natur
 e. Their responses are drawn from the perspectives of psychology\, the phi
 losophy of science\, the philosophy of medicine\, social and biological an
 thropology\, evolutionary theory and the study of animal cognition. We wil
 l hear that human nature is a dangerous illusion\; that human nature names
 —in a perfectly unproblematic way—the subset of traits that happen to 
 be common to many members of our species\; that human nature is a misleadi
 ng abstraction from protean human developmental processes\; that human nat
 ure is a target for investigation that the human sciences cannot do withou
 t\; that ‘human nature’ is a concept with many faces\, each of which p
 lays a role in its own epistemic niche. We will understand why we disagree
  about human nature\, and what\, if anything\, might resolve that disagree
 ment.\n\nMore information at http://www.crassh.cam.ac.uk/events/26169
LOCATION:CRASSH\, Alison Richard Building\, 7 West Road\, Cambridge\, CB3 
 9DP
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