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Human Nature (human + nature)

Distribution by Scientific Domains

Humanities and Social Sciences	69%
Life Sciences	9%
Medical Sciences	6%
Law and Criminology	4%
Business, Economics, Finance and Accounting	4%
2 Other Domains	8%

Distribution within Humanities and Social Sciences

General & Introductory Political Science	18%
General & Introductory Anthropology	15%

Selected Abstracts

HUMAN NATURE AND ITS MATERIAL SETTING IN BASIL OF CAESAREA'S SERMONS ON THE CREATION1

THE HEYTHROP JOURNAL, Issue 2 2008
PHILIP ROUSSEAU
First page of article [source]

EMBRYONIC PERSONHOOD, HUMAN NATURE, AND RATIONAL ENSOULMENT

THE HEYTHROP JOURNAL, Issue 2 2006
JOHN R. MEYER
This essay briefly describes a few of the problems associated with using personhood language to defend the right to life of the pre-implantation embryo. Arguing that an immaterial soul explains the personal identity of an embryo is problematic for many people because there is no apparent spiritual activity in the unborn. While some scholars argue that the embryo has the potential to act as an adult person and thus should be protected from harm, others contend that potentiality alone is insufficient reason to ascribe special moral worth to the embryo in utero. For Thomas Aquinas, the soul is not only the life-principle that organizes the human body, but it is also that by which the human being thinks and wills. By making suitable corrections to Aristotle's hylomorphic depiction of the soul,body relation, I suggest that a rational soul must be present from the moment of conception and that it is at the service of the (embryonic) person. What is of critical importance here is to accept that a human being is present from the moment of conception, something the vast majority of embryologists maintain, notwithstanding the inveiglement of those who state that the pre-implantation blastocyst is simply a disorganized clump of cells. [source]

KANT, SCIENCE, AND HUMAN NATURE

ANALYTIC PHILOSOPHY, Issue 1 2009
PAUL GUYER
First page of article [source]

HUMAN NATURE, COMMUNICATION AND TRUST

ANNALS OF PUBLIC AND COOPERATIVE ECONOMICS, Issue 1 2009
Louis Putterman
ABSTRACT,:,The facts that people can sometimes commit to fulfill promises even when there are no binding penalties and that kind and trusting acts are often reciprocated by trustworthy ones make possible forms of group action that might be ruled out in a hypothetical world of perfectly opportunistic individuals. I discuss some new experiments with a modified Berg,Dickhaut and McCabe (1995),trust game' that provide evidence that most subjects adhere to non-binding agreements, that many are prepared to rely on trust rather than use binding but moderately costly contracts, that the possibility of exchanging words rather than mere numerical proposals enhances trusting and trustworthiness, and that subjects are drawn to fair and efficient exchanges despite the self-interest model's prediction of outcomes more favorable to first-movers. [source]

HUMAN NATURE AND ENHANCEMENT

BIOETHICS, Issue 3 2009
ALLEN BUCHANAN
ABSTRACT Appeals to the idea of human nature are frequent in the voluminous literature on the ethics of enhancing human beings through biotechnology. Two chief concerns about the impact of enhancements on human nature have been voiced. The first is that enhancement may alter or destroy human nature. The second is that if enhancement alters or destroys human nature, this will undercut our ability to ascertain the good because, for us, the good is determined by our nature. The first concern assumes that altering or destroying human nature is in itself a bad thing. The second concern assumes that human nature provides a standard without which we cannot make coherent, defensible judgments about what is good. I will argue (1) that there is nothing wrong, per se, with altering or destroying human nature, because, on a plausible understanding of what human nature is, it contains bad as well as good characteristics and there is no reason to believe that eliminating some of the bad would so imperil the good as to make the elimination of the bad impermissible, and (2) that altering or destroying human nature need not result in the loss of our ability to make judgments about the good, because we possess a conception of the good by which we can and do evaluate human nature. I will argue that appeals to human nature tend to obscure rather than illuminate the debate over the ethics of enhancement and can be eliminated in favor of more cogent considerations. [source]

Calvin's Christ: A Dogmatic Matrix for Discussion of Christ's Human Nature

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY, Issue 4 2007
R. MICHAEL ALLEN
Judgements regarding dogmatic coherence have not been as forthcoming. John Calvin's Christology is presented here as a helpful context within which the fallenness position may be advanced. Calvin's doctrine of original sin allows for fallen nature to be considered distinct from guilt. Calvin's doctrine of the communicatio idiomatum also allows for the predication of fallenness to Christ's human nature without necessitating the contamination of the divine nature. [source]

Did Christ have a Fallen Human Nature?

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY, Issue 3 2004
Oliver Crisp
This seems a difficult thing to say with a traditional understanding of original sin. This article explores this difficulty, proposes a possible solution, and then shows that the solution proposed also faces logical difficulties. The article thus argues that it is not possible to make logical sense of the notion that Christ's humanity was fallen. [source]

The Son's Assumption of a Human Nature: A Call for Clarity

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY, Issue 2 2001
Kelly M. Kapic
This article seeks to bring some clarity to the controversial question of whether the Son of God assumed a fallen or unfallen human nature. We briefly survey conflicting historical assessments and continuing perplexity related to this question. Next we argue that much contemporary confusion can only be removed by first noting how John Calvin and Reformation catechisms tended to understand the idea of Jesus' sinlessness. In conclusion, from the vast literature on the subject we outline seven points which may serve contemporary reflection on this question by showing where the two views agree, disagree, or show internal divisions. [source]

Adapting Minds: Evolutionary Psychology and the Persistent Quest for Human Nature

AMERICAN JOURNAL OF HUMAN BIOLOGY, Issue 2 2006
H. Clark Barrett
No abstract is available for this article. [source]

Deliberative Democracy and "Human Nature": An Empirical Approach

POLITICAL PSYCHOLOGY, Issue 3 2006
Janusz Reykowski
The idea of deliberative democracy is based upon an implicit and questionable assumption that the ability for a meaningful participation in deliberation is a common characteristic of citizens of democratic countries. This paper discusses that assumption and describes the results of empirical research aimed at finding out (1) whether ordinary people are able to solve important ideological and moral controversies by means of deliberation, (2) what factors may facilitate this process, and (3) what are the effects of the deliberation. The research consisted in studying 20 small groups of parents of school-aged children who were asked to participate in a debate about sex education in Polish schools (N = 195). The debates were conducted by a facilitator. Before and after the debate participants filled out questionnaires testing their attitudes and some psychological variables. The debates were recorded on videotapes. We found that it is possible to conduct a debate on ideologically contentious issues that meets some criteria of the deliberative functioning and such a debate may have some of the effects postulated by deliberative theorists. [source]

The Implications of Prospect Theory for Human Nature and Values

POLITICAL PSYCHOLOGY, Issue 2 2004
Robert Jervis
Central to prospect theory are far-reaching claims about what people fear and what gratifies them. Subjective well-being is a topic that social science has been reluctant to discuss in recent years, but it is central to much of our lives. A loss inflicts more harm than a comparable gain produces pleasure; this fact and the related endowment effect are important parts of our psychological makeup. The importance of change rather than absolute value position, and the related significance of the reference point and how it can be altered, can be seen as integral to human nature. [source]

Rethinking Human Nature: A Christian Materialist Alternative to the Soul , Kevin J. Corcoran

RELIGIOUS STUDIES REVIEW, Issue 4 2006
Amos Yong
No abstract is available for this article. [source]

Assertions, Conflations and Human Nature: A Reply to Werner Bonefeld

BRITISH JOURNAL OF POLITICS & INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS, Issue 3 2009
Ian Bruff
No abstract is available for this article. [source]

Human Natures: Genes, Cultures, and the Human Prospect

AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST, Issue 2 2002
Robert W. Sussman
Human Natures: Genes, Cultures, and the Human Prospect. Paul R. Ehrlich. Washington, DC: Island Press, 2000. 31 pp. [source]

Human nature: a foundation for palliative care

NURSING PHILOSOPHY, Issue 2 2008
Beverly J. B. Whelton PhD MSN RN
Abstract, The Aristotelian-Thomist philosopher holds that human intellectual knowledge is possible because of the order in the world and natural human capacities. It is the position of this paper that there is a shared human form or nature that unites all humanity as members of the same kind. Moral treatment is due to every human being because they are human, and is not based upon expression of abilities. Humans have substantial dynamic existence in the world, an existence which overflows in expressive relationships. As both patient and health professional are human, human nature forms the natural foundation of health care. This paper looks towards human nature for moral guidance. The therapeutic relationship is seen as a part of the interpersonal moral space formed by human relationality, which tends towards community , in this case, the healthcare system. The therapeutic relationship is also a source of moral responsibility, as illness makes the patient vulnerable, while knowledge and nursing capacities generate in the nurse a duty to care. Nursing theory serves to connect philosophical reflection and nursing practice. Imogene King's conceptual system and theory of Goal Attainment is the theory that follows from the perspective of human person being presented. This synthesis of philosophy and theory is developed with the goal of shedding light on healthcare decisions in palliative care. The article concludes with the acknowledgement that the complexity of contextualized individual decisions requires the insight and discipline of the moral practitioner, and provides some thoughts on how education, development, and refinement transform an individual into a nurse. [source]

Imaging God: Cyborgs, Brain-Machine Interfaces, and a More Human Future

DIALOG, Issue 4 2005
By Gregory R. Peterson
Abstract:, Recent developments in the neurosciences have made possible the advent of brain-machine interfaces, potentially altering our understanding of our relationship with technology and even the very meaning of what it is to be human. This article briefly examines some of the recent developments in neuroengineering and considers the ethical implications. Working from Jesus' miracles as well as from a dynamic understanding of the image of God, I argue that the categories of healing and transformation should be employed in thinking through the implications of brain-machine interfaces specifically and neuroengineering generally. Although the vocabulary of the cyborg may represent the newfound freedom that this technology can bring, the category of the face may serve as a reminder of the boundedness of human nature. [source]

Hyperkalaemic periodic paralysis: Mother nature versus human nature

EQUINE VETERINARY EDUCATION, Issue 8 2008
S. J. Spier
First page of article [source]

FEELING IS BELIEVING, OR LANDSCAPE AS A WAY OF BEING IN THE WORLD

GEOGRAFISKA ANNALER SERIES B: HUMAN GEOGRAPHY, Issue 3 2007
Edmunds Valdem, rs Bunk
ABSTRACT. This article is work-in-progress, an orientation of thought towards possibilities for individual human beings to diminish the distance between outer and inner landscapes imposed by cultural norms and happenstances such as exile. The dominance of visual landscapes and visual perceptions is seen as a pivotal problem, to be solved by the engagement of all the senses in landscape discourse and formation. All the senses are engaged in earliest childhood, as they have been in ,primitive' societies. While returning to either a state of childhood or primitivism is an impossible dream, it is possible to edge closer to human nature by engaging and honing all the senses, especially the ,earth-bound senses' of feel, smell and taste. Cultivating those senses and developing discourse about them, and incorporating them into landscape formation and enjoyment, is much more difficult than having a discourse about sight and hearing, for which there is a rich and well-developed symbolic language and which can be shared through various types of media. The way towards a deeper discourse about the earth-bound senses, and the way out of the tyranny of the visual, is to be found in stories, as several thinkers suggest. The story told is autobiographical and literary , a mode of geographic writing that I developed in a 2004 book (Bunk,e 2004a), in which the complex dilemmas of home and road were explored. This article shows how in the early 1970s I defined the individual's landscape as ,a unity in one's surroundings perceived through all the senses', with imagination as the key human faculty. And I tell the story of how through complex circumstances, a visually and emotionally repugnant landscape became emotionally and intellectually attractive, with a scent, not a picture or image causing the initial attraction. The external and internal landscapes are thus unified, resulting in a sense of timelessness and placelessness of deep existential significance for the person. [source]

Coherence in consciousness: Paralimbic gamma synchrony of self-reference links conscious experiences

HUMAN BRAIN MAPPING, Issue 2 2010
Hans C. Lou
Abstract A coherent and meaningful percept of the world is essential for human nature. Consequently, much speculation has focused on how this is achieved in the brain. It is thought that all conscious experiences have reference to the self. Self-reference may either be minimal or extended, i.e., autonoetic. In minimal self-reference subjective experiences are self-aware in the weak sense that there is something it feels like for the subject to experience something. In autonoetic consciousness, consciousness emerges, by definition, by retrieval of memories of personally experienced events (episodic memory). It has been shown with transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) that a medial paralimbic circuitry is critical for self-reference. This circuitry includes anterior cingulate/medial prefrontal and posterior cingulate/medial parietal cortices, connected directly and via thalamus. We here hypothesized that interaction in the circuitry may bind conscious experiences with widely different degrees of self-reference through synchrony of high frequency oscillations as a common neural event. This hypothesis was confirmed with magneto-encephalography (MEG). The observed coupling between the neural events in conscious experience may explain the sense of unity of consciousness and the severe symptoms associated with paralimbic dysfunction. Hum Brain Mapp, 2010. © 2009 Wiley-Liss, Inc. [source]

Calvin's Christ: A Dogmatic Matrix for Discussion of Christ's Human Nature

The Son's Assumption of a Human Nature: A Call for Clarity

Trait Psychology and Culture: Exploring Intercultural Comparisons

JOURNAL OF PERSONALITY, Issue 6 2001
Robert R. McCrae
Personality traits, studied for decades by Western personality psychologists, have recently been reconceptualized as endogenous basic tendencies that, within a cultural context, give rise to habits, attitudes, skills, beliefs, and other characteristic adaptations. This conceptualization provides a new framework for studying personality and culture at three levels. Transcultural research focuses on identifying human universals, such as trait structure and development; intracultural studies examine the unique expression of traits in specific cultures; and intercultural research characterizes cultures and their subgroups in terms of mean levels of personality traits and seeks associations between cultural variables and aggregate personality traits. As an example of the problems and possibilities of intercultural analyses, data on mean levels of Revised NEO Personality Inventory scales from college age and adult samples (N = 23,031) of men and women from 26 cultures are examined. Results showed that age and gender differences resembled those found in American samples; different subsamples from each culture showed similar levels of personality traits; intercultural factor analysis yielded a close approximation to the Five-Factor Model; and factor scores were meaningfully related to other culture-level variables. However, mean trait levels were not apparent to expert raters, casting doubt on the accuracy of national stereotypes. Trait psychology can serve as a useful complement to cultural perspectives on human nature and personality. [source]

Wellbeing and Education: Issues of Culture and Authority

JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION, Issue 1 2007
JOHN WHITE
The idea that education should equip people to lead flourishing lives and help others to do so is now becoming salient in policy-making circles. Philosophy of education can help here by clarifying what flourishing consists in. This essay examines one aspect of this. It rejects the view that wellbeing goods are derivable from human nature, as in the theories of Howard Gardner and Edmond Holmes. It locates them, rather, as cultural products, but not culturally-relative ones, drawing attention to the proliferating forms they have taken over the past three or four centuries. It looks to aesthetics and art criticism as a guide to a philosophical treatment of wellbeing goods more generally. It also takes off from aesthetics and art criticism in seeking to identify reliable authorities on the flourishing life. On this, it rejects elitist conceptions in favour of a more democratic model, emphasising its importance in education for citizenship. [source]

MARGOLIS ON HISTORY AND NATURE

METAPHILOSOPHY, Issue 5 2005
Dale Jacquette
Abstract: In his philosophy of culture, Joseph Margolis maintains that, although human beings and human societies have a history, there is no human nature in the sense of a fixed essence. I consider objections to Margolis's thesis, beginning with the possibility that nonhuman intelligent species might be in a position to study human behavior from its origins to its demise with the proper distance from our own situation in order to arrive at an understanding of what is essential to human nature, perhaps as a Kantian regulative rather than constitutive principle, and involving abstractions from particular cases and idealizations, as in other branches of science. Finally, I examine the historical-past orientation of Margolis's concept of humanity's self-understanding and its dependence on the intentionality of human thought, and I conclude that it provides an inadequate reason for denying that there can be such a thing as human nature. [source]

Bodyscapes, Biology, and Heteronormativity

AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST, Issue 4 2009
Pamela L. Geller
ABSTRACT The term bodyscape encourages thinking about representation of bodies at multiple scales,from different bodies as they move through space to the microlandscape of individual bodily differences. A hegemonic bodyscape's representations tend to idealize and essentialize bodies' differences to reinforce normative ideas about a society's socioeconomic organization. But, a dominant bodyscape is never absolute. Bodyscapes that depart from or subvert hegemonic representations may simultaneously exist. In Western society, the biomedical bodyscape predominates in scientific understandings of bodily difference. Its representation of sex differences conveys heteronormative notions about gender and sexuality. Because the biomedical bodyscape frames studies of ancient bodies, investigators need recognize how their considerations of labor divisions, familial organization, and reproduction may situate modern (hetero)sexist representations deep within antiquity. To innovate analyses of socioeconomic relations, queer theory allows scholars to interrogate human nature. Doing so produces alternative bodyscapes that represent the diversity of past peoples' social and sexual lives. [Keywords: bodyscape, heteronormativity, queer theory, bioarchaeology, paleoanthropology] [source]

Anthropological Knowledge and Native American Cultural Practice in the Liberal Polity

AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST, Issue 2 2002
Professor James P. Boggs
U.S. Indian policy is caught between two incommensurable theories or paradigms. First, liberal theory extended the worldviewof early physical science to understand human nature. Providing the conceptual foundation for liberal polities, it largely underwrote U.S. Indian policy into the mid-20th century. Liberal theory recently has been superceded, as theory, by anthropological culture theory, which better accounts for variations between peoples and the realities of human life. The advent of culture theory marks a major paradigm shift within science and public consciousness. Liberal theory, however, remains the foundation for the powerful ideology of liberalism and the institutional practices of Western capitalism and democracy. Thus arise uncomfortable disjunctions,first, between incommensurable theories that both remain vital forces in public life, and, secondarily, between knowledge and practice. This article explores these contending theoretical formations, disjunctions between them, and illustrates how these disjunctions translate into contemporary argument in U.S. Indian policy. [source]

The Human Side of Complex Pubilc Policy Mediation

NEGOTIATION JOURNAL, Issue 4 2003
Susan L. Podziba
If properly barnessed, the passions inherent in complex public policy disputes can be a driving force for reaching sustainable agreements, rather than leading to chaos. The author discusses how mediators can intervene to challenge existing assumptions, encourage ease among negotiators, promote uriosity and lay the groundwork for achieving actionable agreements by delving into human nature and the spectrum of differentiated human emotion [source]

Human nature: a foundation for palliative care

Private Property and the Law of Nature in Locke's Two Treatises: The Best Advantage of Life and Convenience

AMERICAN JOURNAL OF ECONOMICS AND SOCIOLOGY, Issue 3 2009
B. Jeffrey Reno
The study of policy lies at the intersection of economics and ethics, dealing, to a great extent, with private property. Policy design therefore assumes an understanding of the relationship between property and human nature, a matter of great interest to John Locke. Locke's teaching, however, is far from clear, often composed of a set of dual arguments. Yet close attention to the dualistic arguments is revealing: the two objects Locke associates with property,life and convenience,correspond to the two bases upon which he grounds the right to property: labor and consent. His argument reflects the changing economic nature of property, and also provides insight into the poles within which people behave according to the Law of Nature. Thus, a full explication of the relationship between Locke's Law of Nature and doctrine of property illuminates the economic and ethical principles that ought to inform policymakers and analysts. [source]