Do you think there's an essential human nature that's not produced by historical and social development?

Do you think there's an essential human nature that's not produced by historical and social development?
What are your arguments for this?

Human Nature I'm assuming is whatever is particularly inate in humans as opposed to other species? Anyway all I can come up with is a faculty for complex language; other than that I don't see anything exceptional about us.

There is an essential self which is untouched by all forms

>'essential'
>'human nature'

spooky

Of course. For example, what do historical and social development have to do with the fact that humans shit? It's part of human nature. How could anyone believe the opposite. If there wasn't an essential human nature then humans wouldn't resemble each other physically. We'd take any random form, and since there wouldn't be any degree of uniformity, we couldn't fall under the same category. We also wouldn't be able to understand the same languages.

>thinking beautiful women take shits

Spotted the virgin

Biology.

But what is human about shitting it isn't different from other species. Human nature would have to be more specific

Subconciously, like genetics, or pre-natal experience.

Well okay, if you reduce it to basic biological functions that's obviously true, but essentialism encompasses a much broader range, including human behaviour, sexuality, motivations and so on.

Let's take the basic Marxist argument:
> Men can be distinguished from animals by consciousness, by religion or anything else you like. They themselves begin to distinguish themselves from animals as soon as they begin to produce their means of subsistence, a step which is conditioned by their physical organisation. By producing their means of subsistence men are indirectly producing their actual material life.
The way in which men produce their means of subsistence depends first of all on the nature of the actual means of subsistence they find in existence and have to reproduce. This mode of production must not be considered simply as being the production of the physical existence of the individuals. Rather it is a definite form of activity of these individuals, a definite form of expressing their life, a definite mode of life on their part. As individuals express their life, so they are. What they are, therefore, coincides with their production, both with what they produce and with how they produce. The nature of individuals thus depends on the material conditions determining their production.

You're basically just redressing behaviorism. To me, what many people do when they've run into insoluble paradoxes qua human motivation, experience and all that--they say hey let's just infer shit from the activity itself..it is a formalism but really we should not confuse the map for the territory.

Lust and Greed, familial piety (as pack mentality)

this

The mind doesn't exist in a vacuum. It is an epiphenomenon, the result of physical processes particular to humans. How could some degree of human nature not exist? Do you propose that our minds exist entirely independently of the physical world?

Without cultural programming, we are pre-stone age cavemen.Totally feral. Shaven chimps with barely touched vocal chords.

>the mind is an epiphenomenon
How can one think this? How can one actually comprehend the concept of "no mind"

>Men can be distinguished from animals by consciousness
First hurdle right here. Men are animals. And at what point during our evolutionary tree, say we go back as far as some primate form before gorillas and bonobos split off as separate mutations, did consciousness either spring from our neurons or attach itself to us?

We'll honestly there is evidence that plants and animals have consciousness, but people are too spooked by behaviorism to accept this.

>And at what point during our evolutionary tree, say we go back as far as some primate form before gorillas and

>Taking the evolution theory this seriously

wanted to make my own thread for this but whatever

>mom buys me a new trash can
>it's very small
>get the idea to write IDEOLOGY on it and bring it to uni as my lunchbox cause we're philosophy students, and I'm sure people would laugh
>next day I sit in the back, cause I don't want to make it too obvious that I'm doing a bit
>I put it on the desk so that you can clearly see IDEOLOGY on it
>take out a croissant and start eating it
>only people close by are two girls talking in front of me
>one of them looks at the can, but says nothing
>finish the croissant and take out an apple
>girl now sees me clearly taking it out of the bin and asks "Are you eating from a trash can?"
>this is what I've been waiting for
>say "I am already eating from the trash can all of the time" with my best zizek impression
>she turns back to her friend
>I feel disappointed but what can you expect from a bitch
>see them get up to go talk to some guy
>the guy looks towards me so I know they're talking about the trash can
>guy comes up after a few minutes and asks me "Is that a trash can?"
>I say again with an accent "The name of this trash can is ideology."
>he says "huh? Is this some joke?"
>realize he also doesn't get it, but I don't know what else to say but "I am already eating from the trash can all of the time."
>he goes back to the girls and now there's a small group forming around them
>they are pointing to my trash can and laughing
>black guy yells "Yo, Groucho!"
>I think he was trying to say Oscar the Grouch but don't correct him
>put the core back and pretend to be busy reading something

I spent the whole class being pissed that none of these idiots know who zizek is, and that wasn't even true, cause one guy told me later that he knew what I was referencing but didn't tell them because it's funnier to say that I'm eating trash.

>We'll honestly
We'll, we'll, we'll, looks like somebody might be typing on their phone.

Ya got me user.

kek'd

>tfw you'll never be an ex-yugoslav hegelian marxist psychoanalyst known all over the world

Every time that pic is posted I can't stop thinking about how that outfit looks like pre-tomgirl Chris-chan.

DNA then.

Id make friends with you

wow when did chris chan grow a beard?

Outside of basic biological functions, not really.

Even those probably change over the course of thousands of years causing humans to experience a different perspective of the world compared to others. you can go on about conciseness but the fact is that conciousness is still largely affected by, if not made up of, our environment.

Language sure as fuck changes our perspective of the world. Apparently we have been getting taller and living longer over the course of the 20th century, so if likely that might have an impact as well. I imagine humans being living thousands of years ago eating nothing but basic foods and will very little exposure to lights at night time probably feel very different just due to living and breathing.

Culture is just a sophisticated form of living. It reinforces for the next generation how to act and behave.

gas all phone posters

>not posting from Everychan

There is no longer any need for complete dissociation between nature and nurture: it has already been established that "evolution evolves" and that things like culture are probably just as much of an emergent effect as the body physiology or consciousness are (i.e driven from the bottom-up by material, collective entities).

That does away with any claims to essentialism and what you would call a substance is merely a feedback circuitry with nature altering nurture altering nature. Humans can change and be changed, down to the core.

Here's the unshopped version

Strangely enough, I think the sonichu medallion would suit him somehow.

>essential human nature that's not produced by historical and social development?
Art. Literally art. I was taught that the single thing that truly differentiates humans from animals is our ability to create, and apply abstract meaning to a symbol. It's inherent. Humans, or Neanderthals, probably, made jewellery- self expression, before we made clothes.

Maybe we should email him and ask where to send him one as an internet award for something.