Conversations on Human Nature

Recent empirical and philosophical research into the evolutionary history of Homo sapiens, the origins of the mind/brain, and the development of human culture has sparked heated debates about what it means to be human and how knowledge about humans from the sciences and humanities should be understood. Conversations on Human Nature, featuring 20 interviews with leading scholars in biology, psychology, anthropology, philosophy, and theology, brings these debates to life for teachers, students, and general readers. The book -outlines the basic scientific, philosophical and theological issues involved in understanding human nature; -organizes material from the various disciplines under four broad headings: (1) evolution, brains and human nature; (2) biocultural human nature; (3) persons, minds and human nature, (4) religion, theology and human nature; -conc?ludes? with Fuentes and Visala's discussion of what researchers into human nature agree on, what they disagree on, and what we need to learn to resolve those differences.

Agustin Fuentes is a professor and Chair of Anthropology at the University of Notre Dame. His current research focuses on cooperation, community and semiosis in human evolution, ethno-primatology and multispecies anthropology, evolutionary theory, and interdisciplinary approaches to human nature(s). Fuentes’s recent books include Evolution of Human Behavior (Oxford, 2008), Biological Anthropology: Concepts and Connections (McGraw-Hill, 2011), and Race, Monogamy, and Other Lies They Told You: Busting Myths about Human Nature (University of California, 2012). Aku Visala is a senior researcher in the Centre for Excellence in Reason and Religious Recognition Research at the University of Helsinki. He has previously held research positions in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Notre Dame, the Centre for Anthropology and Mind at the University of Oxford, and the Center for Theological Inquiry in Princeton. He is the author of Naturalism, Theism, and the Cognitive Study of Religion: Religion Explained? (Ashgate, 2011) and a number of other books in the philosophy of religion. His current research interests include the cognitive and biological bases of recognition and theological and philosophical anthropologies as they relate the cognitive sciences and evolutionary psychology.