HUMAN SOCIOBIOLOGY

Abstract. Sociobiology is the scientific study of why organisms sometimes associate with other organisms. This paper surveys recent research on the reasons for altruism and aggression. It also considers the contributions an individual's genes and its environment make to its behavior, and it reviews functional theories for the evolution of cannibalism, polygamy, homosexuality, and infanticide in humans and other animals. Finally mention is made of the limited and generally negative attitude of sociobiology to religion.     

THE HUMAN WORLD

We do not have to choose between belief in a divinely ordained cosmic moral order and the arbitrariness of our moral commitments. The alternative is a secular view that accepts that there is a natural cosmic order, denies that the order is moral, and relies on the values of the human world to provide a moral order by which we can reasonably live. These values are human constructions. Reliance on them is reasonable if they have passed the test of critical reflection. Our well-being depends on living according to the values that passed that test. Natural necessities, the contingencies of life, and our fallibility, however, limit the extent to which we can control how we live. We cannot free ourselves from necessities, but we can reduce the extent to which we are vulnerable to contingencies, and we can, within limits, increase the control we have by correcting mistakes we make when we are insufficiently critical of our attitudes, commitments, and values.     

THE CONCEPT OF HUMAN DIGNITY AND THE REALISTIC UTOPIA OF HUMAN RIGHTS

Abstract: Human rights developed in response to specific violations of human dignity, and can therefore be conceived as specifications of human dignity, their moral source. This internal relationship explains the moral content and moreover the distinguishing feature of human rights: they are designed for an effective implementation of the core moral values of an egalitarian universalism in terms of coercive law. This essay is an attempt to explain this moral‐legal Janus face of human rights through the mediating role of the concept of human dignity. This concept is due to a remarkable generalization of the particularistic meanings of those “dignities” that once were attached to specific honorific functions and memberships. In spite of its abstract meaning, “human dignity” still retains from its particularistic precursor concepts the connotation of depending on the social recognition of a status—in this case, the status of democratic citizenship. Only membership in a constitutional political community can protect, by granting equal rights, the equal human dignity of everybody.     

PSYCHOANALYSIS AND HUMAN RATIONALITY

It is clear that Freud's theories have had a profound and revolutionary impact on ideas about human nature and human rationality. However, the precise nature of that impact is less clear. It is often said that psychoanalysis reveals the irrational forces at the root of even the most apparently rational forms of thought and activity; and that, in so doing, it undermines ideas about human rationality which have dominated western thought. That is undoubtedly true. However, it is only one aspect of the truth. For the implications of psychoanalysis are more complex and far-reaching than this currently fashionable view suggests.     

早期经验和人类的发展

经验对行为的发展起着多么大的作用?这个问题是传统的先天论者和经验论者论战的中心。一方认为婴儿在生物学上已经具备能够适应感觉刺激的能力,并以一种有系统的方式与外在环境交互作用。这种观点认为儿童随着年龄的增长所完成的较复杂技能是来自成熟而不是来自经验。经验论者的观点可以William James的论述为代表:“婴儿用