Human Nature Philosophy

According to Aristotelian tradition, every species has a specific nature. Every natural kind has a unique defining form. Chemical substances provide the model: each chemical element has a constitutive atomic structure. Natural kinds have determinate nominal and real essences—attributes that characterize them uniquely. The human kind is no different: it has a distinctive nature that makes it the kind it is. Thus, tradition has it that the human kind is defined as Homo sapiens; as we might say, the thinking ape. Snakes have a snake nature, cows a cow nature, and humans a human nature—a distinctive mode of existence, a form, an essence. But at this point agreement ends: for many contrary suggestions have been made about the essence of human nature. Here is a list: freedom, knowledge, thought, language, imagination, perception, reason, memory, morality, awareness of mortality, creativity, neurosis, consciousness. These traits have philosophical schools attached to them and famous names: existentialism, empiricism, rationalism, romanticism, Sartre, Locke, Hume, Descartes, Kant, Plato, Proust, Heidegger, Chomsky, Wittgenstein, Freud. Each thinks it has hit on the essence of man—what man deeply and fundamentally is. I could add a couple of less prominent proposals: technology, humor, the hands, intellectual perception. Strangely, no one ever plumps for emotion, presumably because it is too close to animal nature—though human emotions are surely in a class of their own. And there is no denying that these are central salient traits of the human animal. But which is it? What fulfills the Aristotelean requirement? What are we really, centrally, essentially? What makes us uniquely us?

I say: none of the above. Not because I have another theory up my sleeve, but because there is no unique Aristotelean essence of the human animal. We just have a plurality of important traits—we don’t have anything like a chemical real essence. We are a congeries. We are all of the above, with no overarching essence, no unifying principle. We aren’t even a family resemblance kind; we are a split kind, no kind at all, a heap. We are nothing in particular. We have no species identity.[1] We are the species with no name, no defining characteristic, nothing on which to pin our identity. Aristotle is a counter-example to himself! He refutes his own doctrine, and that of his many successors. We can’t even say which trait or traits are primary and which secondary; we overlap with other species in some of our traits, while differing in others. I think intellectual vision and the hand are neglected, but I don’t think they are especially central. We are a list, a ragbag: that is our essence, our identity. Our essence is to have no name. Homo what? And we are aware of this: we know ourselves as multiple beings composed of disparate parts. We feel no species unity inside, not even the unity of Sartrean nothingness. We aren’t a radically free nothingness; we are a bunch of different things, loosely joined. I would say our major three components are perception, thought, and language—but we are all the rest too. We are what we are, plural. We have no unitary human nature.

It is an interesting question whether we are uniquely thus. There is no necessity about this: we might not be alone in our plurality. Other animals (or aliens) might be in the same case. It would still be our situation. But I rather doubt it is the general case; I suspect we are alone in lacking a unitary nature. I think there is a snake nature and a walrus nature, even a chimpanzee nature—though I hesitate to describe it. There is even a Vulcan nature (cool, rational, imperturbable). But there is no human nature, save the congeries outlined. The Aristotelean framework may apply to everything in the natural world except us. Our nature is not neat and orderly but various and messy. We are a bit of everything (like an everything bagel, complete with a hole in the center). There is so much going on inside us, pulling us in different directions. Animals in general are simpler beings with a clear animal nature: elephants are not swamped with language and imagination, freedom and abstract knowledge. They are not in doubt about what they will be when they grow up—manual workers, artists, scientists, priests, musicians, entrepreneurs. So many things to choose from, so many traits to cultivate and exploit! We are too multifaceted for our own good; our given nature doesn’t incline us in a fixed direction. Our lack of a unitary nature is the bane of our existence. We are not so much a blank slate as a crammed slate. Existentialism thought we are a nothingness; in fact, we are a too-muchness. We have no clear idea what we are, because there is no single thing we are—not free agents, not thinkers, not speakers, not knowers, not imaginers, not rememberers, not fearers of death, etc. We are all those things, but none of them in particular. In the beginning was the multiplicity (not the deed or the word or the image). How many natures do I have? Let me count the ways.[2]

[1] This isn’t to say we have no biological identity, i.e., physical identity. The human body has as much of a unitary essence as any animal body. It is the human mind that lacks such an essence—our species of mind. When people speak of human nature, they chiefly have in mind the type of mind we have. This is connected to the question of the criterion of the mental (it is hard to find one)

[2] The reason kinds of object are thought to have a unitary real essence is that they have a unitary nominal essence. In the case of animals this is largely a matter of behavior (as well as physical appearance). This works well enough for most animal species, given their uniformity of behavior; but in the case of humans, we have enormous plasticity and variety of behavior. It is hard to pin down a fixed and limited nominal essence, because of all the psychological complexity of the species (all those coexisting faculties). Thus, there is no characteristic human nominal essence consisting in a single central behavioral pattern; we have many real essences, i.e., well-defined psychological capacities. We are not just accomplished speakers but also wide-ranging knowers and tremendous imaginers and great rememberers and vociferous moralists. We are not specialized enough to have a single human nature, not confined enough. We are many things simultaneously. We could be called Homo pluribus. We are like an all-purpose toolbox.

The Clustering Problem

How and why do properties cluster together into an object? How and why do many accidents join together to form a single substance? How do they constitute a cohesive unitary whole? The properties are separate existences yet they form clusters: what binds them together? What is the unifying glue? Why don’t they occur independently and singly, and why don’t they fall apart for lack of necessary connection? It is different for analytic connections: there is no puzzle about how and why bachelorhood and maleness and singleness cling together, but why do shape and color (say) keep each other company? What makes an object combine being red with being square?[1] How do these different things belong to the same thing? Parts of objects can exist separately, but properties of objects can’t: no property can be instantiated without other properties being instantiated alongside it. Properties necessarily come in pluralities; a certain sort of holism obtains. In fact, a given object has a huge number of properties if we include relations; it is a hive of properties. What makes them band together so tenaciously? There is no force that we know of that does this—nothing like magnetic attraction or superglue. They hold tightly together but without visible support. Yet they don’t merge or meld. They come in neat bundles but there is no mechanism of bundling. It seems quasi-miraculous—they just do it! In a world without clustering, it would seem like a miracle if someone brought it about—like bringing all the stars together into a single enormous super-star. How does Plato account for it, with his universals all lined up discretely in a row? Do they suddenly embrace each other? Predicates don’t do that: you can write one predicate down without having to write down any others. Even concepts are not so group-oriented: you can think one concept of an object without having to think other concepts of that object (except analytically connected ones). Whence this propensity to coalesce that we see in properties? They seem to seek out each other’s company, as if they can’t stand to be alone. What is this curious connective affinity? What is the solution to the binding problem?

Someone might feel so baffled by this binding that they contemplate denying the appearances. It isn’t really true that a single object has many mysteriously connected properties. There is no monism of objects at the center of a plurality of properties; rather, there is a corresponding plurality of objects. There isn’t one object that is both red and square; there is one red object and one square object. Each object has its characteristic property, but no object has both. It is like the mind and the body for a Cartesian: the mind is thought and the body is extension—nothing is both.[2] Similarly, nothing is both colored and shaped; different things are. We go dualist on objects, thus avoiding the clustering problem. There is no such thing as clustering, only a misguided monistic ontology. Away with the multiply instantiating object! We expand our ontology to save our metaphysics. Or again, we wax eliminative: the only true properties are shape properties—colors are mythical, non-existent. Then there is no clustering to worry about (compare eliminative materialism). And there is a third option: we go full monism–all properties are identical! We don’t have to worry about the mind-body problem (that mysterious psychophysical nexus) if all properties are physical; we just reduce the mind to the body. Similarly, we might claim that all properties are of a single type when you get right down to it—as it might be, shape properties (modes of extension). Colors are really shapes (of molecules, say). Then there is no clustering of disparate properties: everything can be done with macro shapes and micro shapes, with no one thing having more than a single property. Obviously, this is a pretty dramatic move, but it exists in logical space (I don’t believe it for a second). Or we could get even more dramatic and deny that anything exists—no objects and no properties. The whole ontology of substances and attributes is misguided, an illusion of reason. Then there will be no clustering of properties in objects, just the appearance of it. If the clustering is mysterious and inexplicable, as we naively think of it, then philosophers of a certain stripe will seek for extravagant solutions, generally revisionary (mystery phobia can lead to strange abreactions).

The problem of causation is that we can’t identify and describe the necessary connection in which we think causation consists. The problem of analyticity is that we can’t discern the semantic entailment on which it rests. The mind-body problem is that we can’t understand the emergence relation between brain and mind, though it apparently exists. The problem of clustering is that we can’t grasp the principle of cohesion that ties one property to other properties in a single object. We have a family of problems here of similar form, all centering on opaque necessary connections. My purpose has been to add the clustering problem to the list. This is a problem in basic ontology—it could hardly get more basic. It is the problem of how objects are possible; alternatively, what properties are.[3]

[1] Geometry treats shape independently of color, thus showing their independence, but shape cannot exist concretely without color—or mass, position, solidity, rigidity, etc.

[2] It is odd that the mind-body problem has not generated more than two substances (matter and spirit), given that the mind is not a homogeneous domain. Why not postulate one substance for reason and another for sensation, given the deep differences between them? Or one for volition and one for cognition. How could such different attributes coexist in a single object? Yet they appear to.

[3] Hume called causation the cement of the universe—what holds the whole contraption together. But there is a more fundamental kind of cement—the kind that holds individual objects together. Properties don’t just co-exist in a single object; they cannot be instantiated without the assistance of other properties. Why is this and how is it accomplished? That is the problem of objects themselves—how the bundling of properties comes about, by necessity. They are not really bundles (loose assemblages) but more like living organisms—complex organized internally cooperative things. It is as if the properties are in a symbiotic pact with each other. Colors and shapes are born cooperatively into an object in which they live out their days till separated or the object is destroyed. In some ways they are like cooperating genes with objects as their vehicle. They stick together opportunistically. They cohabit in a single object for the duration; they have no choice.

Al Franken and Me

I was at George Soros’s wedding in 2013, a lavish affair with hundreds of people in attendance, talking to Senator Al Franken. I explained George’s favorite joke to Al: What is the difference between a Hungarian and a Rumanian? They will both sell you their mother, but the Hungarian will deliver. No bad, Al remarked. This was before Senator Franken had been removed from the Democratic party; he was still a promising new senator representing Minnesota. I myself was in the process of being cancelled by the American philosophy profession. A couple of years later his own party destroyed his political career in their ill-advised liberal zeal. At this point I lost faith in the Democratic party, as I had already lost faith in the American philosophy profession (remember I was not the only philosopher to lose his job and reputation). This was American liberals at their worst. I don’t doubt that this kind of behavior—stupid and cruel—is what led to the troubles of the Democrats, which led to the triumph of Trump. I also think that the treatment of various philosophers around this time is a disgrace to American philosophy that will not soon be erased, if ever. It’s the kind of thing that makes people despise universities. We know what happened next: Trump and the rise of the punitive right. It is notable that Al Franken is still rejected by the Democratic party and the cancelled philosophers are still cancelled. I see a bleak future ahead in politics and university life. The politics of personal destruction is alive and well on the left.