Dialectical Model of Human Nature – DMoHN
“Most of the issues that vex humanity daily – ethnic conflict, arms escalation, overpopulation, abortion, environment, endemic poverty, to cite several most persistently before us – cannot be solved without integrating knowledge from the natural sciences with that of the social sciences and humanities. Only fluency across the boundaries will provide a clear view of the world as it really is, not as seen through the lens of ideologies and religious dogmas or commanded by myopic response to immediate need.” (pg 14)
– Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge (1998) – E. O. Wilson
“A balanced perspective cannot be acquired by studying disciplines in pieces, but through pursuit of the consilience among them.” (pg 14)
“The two disciplines have the following challenge. We know that virtually all of human behavior is transmitted by culture. We also know that biology has an important effect on the origin of culture and its transmission. The question remained is how biology and culture interact, and in particular how they interact across all societies to create the commonalities of human nature.” (pg 200)
Intro to Model Logic
The Hegelian Dialectic asserts that a proposed thesis is countered by an antithesis, only to be reconciled through a synthesis, propelling the dialectical argument towards enlightenment.
‘Aufheben’ was the German word Hegel utilized to denote the synthesis. An English translation of ‘aufheben’ is indicative of a ‘lifting up’, ‘abolishment’ and ‘sublation’ of both the thesis and antithesis. In this sense, aspects of both the thesis and antithesis are stored, discarded and transformed in the development and emergence of a synthesis.
In many ways, these verbs accurately reflect the actions of consciousness in that sensations and perceptions of the external environment are acquired, consolidated, learned and forgotten through the actions of a conscious being.
Moreover, the physiology of any biological nervous system is fundamentally reducible to a complex balance between excitation and inhibition of neurons, further elaborated in the last dialectic.
Novel conceptions, theories, or models of the natural world develop as a curious mind attempts to systematize, or understand the external world. Many times, innovative ideas clash with the contemporary ‘nomos’, or prevailing social conventions, causing a cultural friction between the innovative individual and the ‘nomos’. The Dialectical Model of Human Nature reflects cultural friction by opposing idealistic input from the individual to that of natural history.
There are many examples of great thinkers in human history who were treated ignominiously by their culture for their contributions to human knowledge. Socrates was sentenced to death for questioning the authority of political power as he attempted to find a balance between philosophy and democracy; Galileo suffered religious persecution for promoting a heliocentric model of the universe; and in a more recent example Rosa Parks shattered conventional racial persecution by refusing to give up her seat on the bus. In almost every case, the inquiries of each individual led them to a subjective negation of their local ecology and to take action against this cognitive dissonance. The Dialectical Model of Human Nature illustrates this concept by opposing input from an individual with that of natural history.
Natural History
In order to interpret historical phenomenon, physical, or material artifacts and substrates must be examined in addition to the progression of metaphysical or nonphysical ideas, knowledge and social conventionality.
Hegel classically interpreted history as motivated by the fundamental progression of ideas or knowledge. Whereas a young Hegelian, Karl Marx, famously stated he ‘turned Hegel on his head’ by interpreting natural history through the progression and innovation of material changes within the modes of production.
These methodological traditions, Historical Idealism and Historical Materialism, must not be exclusive. Rather, an empirical analysis of natural history must dialectically include and appreciate both.
Historical Materialism
The most evident and well understood physical substrate of human history is found within our body as a biological organism. Charles Darwin provided the unifying theory of biological evolution for the natural sciences, which includes physics, chemistry, and biology.
However, a materialistic approach to natural history also includes the study of physical artifacts, or relics of human production as they are left from generation to generation. Classically categorized as social sciences, anthropology and archeology epitomize this interpretation of natural history.
Human Nature
Ultimately, there are two factors that determine human nature; the Regulation of Biology and the Manipulation of Culture. Both biology and culture are comprised of distinct and variable factors with observable and foreseeable effects on human behavior; which is, in the end, derived from synthetic action of the brain.
The dominant model of human nature, found primarily in contemporary economics, conceptualizes human behavior as rational and utility maximizing. Unfortunately, this model overlooks some of our most powerful and uniquely human traits. Specifically, it ignores the influence of affect on cognition and behavior. The notion that emotional states can significantly affect rational thought is far from old, but the explicit incorporation of emotionality into models of human nature has just begun to take empirical interest. In this sense, human beings are both rational, in the Enlightenment sense, and subjectively emotional, in the Romantic tradition.
Just like any other animal on this planet, human beings are biological organisms. Effectively, the emergence of uniquely human capacities occurs shortly after birth. A human child is born “eye’s wide-open” into a complex matrix of social interaction and exchange, commonly referred to as culture. Benefiting from millions of years of human experience, contemporary cultures socialize children with language and behavioral guidelines or expectations that fundamentally structure the framework of consciousness. Psychologists and sociologists know this process of ontogenetic development as Enculturation.
Moreover, the conventionally misguided debate over the influence of nature or nurture on human cognition and behavior is alleviated in this model by explicitly joining aspects of both culture and biology with dialectic logic. In other words, the Dialectical Model of Human Nature poses that human nature is not a matter of nature or nurture, but rather a matter of influence between and within nature and nurture.