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Human Nature in a Post-essentialist World

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Grant Ramsey
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Abstract

In this essay I examine a well-known articulation of human nature skepticism, a paper by Hull. I then review a recent reply to Hull by Machery, which argues for an account of human nature that he claims is both useful and scientifically robust. I challenge Machery’s account and introduce an alternative account—the “life-history trait cluster” conception of human nature—that I hold is scientifically sound and makes sense of (at least some of) our intuitions about—and desiderata for—human nature.

Type
General Philosophy of Science
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 80 , Issue 5 , December 2013 , pp. 983 - 993
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

†

I thank Patrick Bateson, Andreas De Block, Michael Deem, Agustin Fuentes, Edouard Machery, and Charles Pence for their comments.

References

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