“No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, […] any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind. And, therefore, never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee” John Donne,1624, Devotions upon Emergent Occasions.
We shall start from an indisputable truth, namely that we are both investigators and subjects of our inquiry into human nature. Given that truth, how can we be sure of eliminating personal beliefs and prejudices? In other words, how (if at all) is it possible to know anything about human nature?
Drawing on content from previous sessions within our course on Human Nature and recent updates from medicine, psychiatry and physiology, I shall present and evaluate various answers and, thereby, set the groundwork for next week’s session on Human Morality.