List of Definitions of Human Nature

• DeGrazia, D., 1996, Taking Animals Seriously: Mental Life and Moral Status, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

  • 1. “To be a person is to have the capacity for sufficiently complex forms of consciousness.”

• Brock, D., 1998. “Enhancements of Human Function: Some Distinctions for Policymakers”, in E. Parens (ed.), Enhancing Human Traits, Washington: Georgetown University Press, pp. 48–69.

  • 1. “Human beings are creatures that suffer, age and die, and our struggle to deal with this vulnerability is a central aspect of what makes human life valuable.”

• Liao, S. M., 2005. “Are ‘Ex Ante’ Enhancements Always Permissible?” American Journal of Bioethics 5(3): 23–25.

  • 1. “Human beings are social creatures that relate to one another through a complex nexus of interpersonal commitments and hierarchical structures.”

• Hoekema, Anthony A. 1986. Created in God's Image. Michigan: Eerdmans.

  • 1. "to be human is to bear the image of God.”

• Machery, Edouard (June 2008). "A Plea for Human Nature". Philosophical Psychology. 21 (3): 321–329

  • 1. "Human nature is the set of properties that are separately necessary and jointly sufficient for being a human."

    2. "Human nature is the set of properties that humans tend to possess as a result of the evolution of their species.”

• Samuels, Richard (2012). “Science an Human Nature”. Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement. 70 (4887): 587–588.

  • 1. "Human nature should be identified with a suite of mechanisms, processes, and structures that causally explain many of the more superficial properties and regularities reliably associated with humanity."

• Hull, D. L. (1986). On human nature. PSA: Proceedings of the Biennal Meeting of the Philosophy ofScience Association, 2, 3–13.

  • 1. “human beings are essentially the same, that is, they share the same nature... Periodically a biological species might be characterized by one or more characters which are both universally distributed among and limited to the organisms belonging to that species, but such states of affairs are temporary, contingent and relatively rare.”

• Ramsey, Grant. (2013). Human Nature in a Post-Essentialist World. Philosophy of Science. 80. 983-993.

  • 1. “Human nature is just that set of traits possessed by each individual and essential to his or her being human.”