Is citing "human nature" as a cause of a particular human behavior, inaccurate?

It’s mostly an excuse, but certain things are typically associated with human nature. It would be up to knowledgable parties to decide whether it applies to the specific situation or not. But in general, humans are selfish, highly sexual, opportunistic, and needy beings who crave constant attention and agreement.

In general, I think that assessment of humanity is not correct. Humanity doesn’t make people greedy, opportunistic, other things you said. Those are individual decisions.

Just because there’s serial killers who are human doesn’t mean serial killing is human nature.

So you’re more asking about what human nature is from birth.
If that’s the case, it’s too enigmatic, because of outside influences on each person throughout their life. So I chose to focus on those influences.
We live in a world infested with the facets of the above assessment, and it is damn near impossible to live a lifestyle in which you can completely avoid these influences, or choose how you are impacted by them. Humans start being molded by every moment, by every interaction, from the moment they are born, if not slightly before. So their is no choice as to what your nature will be as a human. Other people decide for you, with or without knowing. And a good lot of those people.. would certainly not deem themselves very “pure”.

It’s just human nature to believe that it’s not inherently human to be “selfish, highly sexual, opportunistic, and needy” in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

Human nature—isn’t that our animal nature? What evolution has built into us as a survival mechanism? I don’t see why that isn’t a reasonable and helpful explanation of behavior.

I guess if someone just shrugs their shoulders, and says, “that’s human nature,” then it really isn’t an attempt to explain something. It’s as good as saying, “I don’t know.” But then, it’s not really a serious conversation if people are going to let that be the end of it. No one ever passed a law that every conversation had to be serious and scientifically rigorous as far as I know.

I cannot stand when people say, “I’m only human” when they have inappropriate behavior. It is an excuse. We are ALL only human, but that doesn’t excuse us from acting in ways that we know are incorrect. Have some ownership of your actions.

@The_Compassionate_Heretic: I don’t think you would have a problem with thinking that human nature (i.e. our genetic inheritance) gives us the power of kindness and cooperation. to my mind, I think it bothers you that it can have a bad side, too. (leftists, I notice ascribe evil to society, as Rousseau did.)

I think it’s vital to both acknowledge human nature, and to rise above it.

@The_Compassionate_Heretic you are one hundred percent right on this one.

unless someone has spent a large part of their argument explaining many scientific studies or providing some kind of proof that ‘action x’ is in fact “human nature”, then the claim that ‘action x’ is human nature is a fallacy. and in some cases a cop out.

a lot of people cite “evolution” or darwin when speaking of “human nature” but most people have not read a single word from darwin (or have only read bits and pieces).
many people believe survival of the fittest is a darwinism… but its not, it was coined by Herbert Spencer. and is not even a proper characterization of natural selection, which happens at random

i can not say it any better than you so i will just quote you, citing “human nature” as a cause of any particular action is “more indicative of what a particular individual thinks of humanity, rather than an objective description of humanity.”

philosophers have been discussing “what is human nature” at least since ancient greek society, and probably even before that. so if all these people have not come to a conculsion, i am not about to take someone’s word for it. if i am going to “buy” an argument that something is human nature it is going to take a lot of convincing first.

since Ria777 brought up rousseau, he is a perfect example: he was surrounded by warfare, so of course he would claim that humans are inherently evil. his claim is indicative of his own perception of the humans of his time acting very violent/ waring over property…. @Ria777 i must add, that rousseau was not a “leftist” and i think it is a blanket statement to say that “leftist” think the world is evil

<———————Leftist who believes in good.

@alive: I thought that Rousseau believed in the good nature of humans. I did not mean to paint him as a leftist, though, more that leftists believe that we start off good and artificial circumstances makes us evil. I actually think we do live in a largely evil world*. I also believe that we have both bad and good qualities innate in us.

*—I have had a motherfucker of a life, so that flavors my opinion just a bit.

also: ”[survival of the fittest] is not even a proper characterization of natural selection, which happens at random”.

poppycock, sir! natural selection does not happen at random. cheetahs run real fast and catch food. evolution favored the genes for efficient running.

otherwise you’d have a situation like in Chernobyl where the most messed-up mutants would successfully manage to survive and reproduce. it doesn’t happen. most mutations don’t convey a survival advantage. the rare good ones do and contribute to that species or at very least convey some advantage even if not directly. obviously not every feature contributes to the propagation of DNA in direct or indirect, obvious or subtle ways. still, I wouldn’t call it entirely random.

finally, I think that archaeology, DNA and all its spin-offs and studying our relatives (i.e. other primates) gives us a better handle on what human nature means than just philosophizing.

@Ria777 I, too, have had a motherfucker of a life. I’m sorry you’ve had to experience that. I hope one day you can overcome it, and not let it continue to taint your view of the whole world. Sincerely. I wish you peace.

first sorry for the length i usually try to keep them much shorter, but i had some ‘xplainin to do…

@Ria777 oh.my.god! i really fucked up on the rousseauian thing. i read rousseau and hobbes around the same time and so in my head i got their theories of human nature mixed up (they are opposites, rousseau believes communal qualities or “goodness” is inherent in humans while hobbes is the opposite—he is the one who was surrounded by wars and violence and thus believed humans to be inherently immoral and evil) so for the mix up i am very very sorry! my brain was just backwards! haha

but i think the hobbsian vs rousseauian claims about human nature prove thecompassionateheritic’s point. that people’s claims about human nature speak more to their own thoughts on humanity rather than an “objective” one.

this goes for scientists as well… scientist A and scientist B can have all the same facts in hand and still come up with completely different theories and conclusions.

as for the evolutions stuff… you totally proved my point… i am not mixed up about natural selection. natural selection depends on things like the exact moment in time and the environment.

cheetahs running fast is not a “natural selection” that is a characteristic of all cheetahs. and that is much too broad.

read the moth example given by wikipedia, it is in the opening paragraph of the article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_selection

the moth thing is a perfect example of what i mean by random. the environment at the time changed into something it had never been before and randomly the moths that happened to be darker survived. dark moths were no more “fit” than light moths, they just happened to have a small advantage over the other moth. if the environment changed again (i.e. less soot) there is no reason why the light moth would not make a comeback. because dark moths would no longer have the advantage if trees were not dark.

natural selection applies to minuscule adaptions. for example a heron bird who sticks its beak into crab holes to find food. we are talking a heron with a 4 cm wide beak vs. a bird with a 4.5 cm wide beak. point 5 centimeters is not exactly a noticeable change unless you study the bird the way evolutionary biologists do. (if crabs are smaller that year depending on the food supply then a smaller beak is better because it can fit into the smaller hole to get the crab out and eat it, so more small beaked birds will survive longer and have more opportunity to copulate. if crabs are bigger and dig larger holes the bird with the larger beak has the comparative advantage because the big strong crab is less likely to get away from a 4.5 cm beaked bird than a 4 cm beaked bird; though the small billed won’t die out immediately because plenty of them will still be able to defeat the crab even if it is slightly bigger than usual.

so when talking about evolution we are not talking about “cheetahs run fast because of natural selection, ” as you put it, they run fast because they are cheetahs…. and in my terms, we are not talking about “birds fly because of natural selection”... birds just fly because birds fly.

this is exactly what i mean about people who talk about darwin and have never read a single page of “On the Origin of Species”

i hope this answer was not too ramble-y. if there is anything i can do to clarify something please let me know

@alive: I understood how natural selection works. my main point comes down to this, that leftist dislike acknowledging that humans have an innate tendency to aggression or social hierarchy (if not even male dominance, which I think comes down to testosterone levels, though I don’t believe that as an inarguable truth) the way that members of other primate species do. I believe in acknowledging that we do so as to overcome it, rather than say that capitalism did it all to us.

@augustlan: I don’t believe in a clear-cut division between having overcome something and not having overcome it. my experiences will always taint how I view the world to a degree. I wouldn’t even consider it a bad thing. not a wholly bad thing, anyway. of course I can say that as the after-effects of my childhood and adolescence fade. at the time they marked me more than they do now.

but how can you define innate goodness or innate evilness?

good and evil are both concepts that are made up by humans, so while i think we can define certain actions as good or bad, we cannot define any human instinct as good or bad, it just is.

please, don’t ascribe to me view that I don’t happen to have. I never endorsed the idea of innate good or evil. I talked about beliefs concerning nnate goodness and evil. sounds like we agree in our ideas.

“humans have an innate tendency to aggression or social hierarchy”

you can see how i could have taken that as a view endorsing innate (fill-in-the-blank), hence asking my last question.

anyways, if i was mistaken that you don’t think that is good or bad, then ok.

no, I don’t consider aggression or social hierarchy evil, with some caveats. our brains (as best I can tell) chunk information in the same way whether thinking about a hundred people or a billion. our brains cannot comprehend what a billion people means. the rules of tribal warfare when applied not to bands of dozens of people but to millions led to a situation where each tribe had the capacity to kill millions of people with nuclear missiles. it may yet happen. our innate “rules” of social hierarchy also has not updated itself. (unlike believers in the Green vMeme* I think hierarchy happens naturally for at least partially rational reasons.)

*—Google Spiral Dynamics