Are human beings fundamentally different from the rest of the animal world? Can what we essentially are be captured in a biological or evolutionary description? Roger Scruton discusses the nature of human nature with Nigel Warburton in this episode of the Philosophy Bites podcast.
This is philosophy bites, with me, Nigel.
Warburton, and me, David Edmonds.
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Why do human beings find philosophy bites so irresistibly stimulating and enjoyable?
Can this widespread phenomena be understood in purely biological terms, in terms of neurons and synapses and so on?
Roger Scruton thinks not.
A scientific account, he says, fails to capture our relationship to the world and to other people.
Roger Scruton, welcome to philosophy bites.
Oh, thank you for inviting me.
It's great to be back.
Now, the topic we're going to focus on is human nature.
The word nature suggests that human nature is part of the animal world or the plant world.
We're all part of the same thing.
Nature is that biological, environmental thing that we find ourselves thrown into.
Yes, that's absolutely true.
And of course, we are natural objects.
It's almost a necessary truth to say that anything that exists in space and time is something that exists in the network of causal laws which produce one thing from another and which relate the beginning of things to the end of things.
So that's taken as read, at least by me.
The great question is, is that all we have to say?