On Being Social Beings

Bryan Parkhurst
Photo credit: Tanya Rosen-Jones ’97

Keith Tarvin
Photo credit: Tanya Rosen-Jones ’97

On Being Social Beings 

Offered fall 2021

Humans are social creatures. We live in families, we work in teams, we envision duty and purpose through religious fellowship, we negotiate through economic alliances and political coalitions, and our norms are shaped by our culture, itself an emergent property of group-living. Most of us probably take all this for granted, as though it stood in no need of explanation or contemplation. But why do we live like this? People who serve in the military or as firefighters do so at great risk to themselves, and often do so to the great benefit of other people whom they will never meet. Why do people do that? Wouldn’t individuals fare better in the end if they simply looked out for themselves and avoided taking risks to benefit strangers? And what prevents such social systems from breaking down due to the strains imposed by free-riders who reap the benefits provided by social cooperators, but who don’t themselves contribute to the public good? 

These questions have broad implications for all sorts of human endeavors—economic exchange, political alliances, systems of government, religious organization and practice, ethics and morality—and they raise questions about the fundamental nature of being human. Political and social philosophers from Locke and Rousseau to Weber and Durkheim have wrestled with questions of whether humans are inherently cooperative social beings or if instead, societies force sociality upon them. Evolutionary biologists began to seriously probe the paradox of the free-rider problem in the late 1960s, and in the last two decades have generated a strong theoretical and empirical scaffolding upon which economists, political scientists, psychologists, and cultural anthropologists are building robust understandings of why we are social (as well as why we sometimes aren’t). 

Students will take a multidisciplinary approach to these questions (and other related ones!) by enrolling in both FYSP 181: Selfishness or Altruism? The Evolution of Sociality in Humans and Other Animals and PHIL 127 Philosophical Approaches to Society and Sociality. FYSP 181  explores the ability of evolutionary theory to explain social behavior in humans and other animals. Can natural selection favor cooperation in non-human animals in spite of their “selfish genes”? Perhaps so, but can evolutionary theory account for social phenomena that seem restricted to humans—for example, religion, economic exchange, political alliances, and ethics? PHIL 127 raises questions about the fundamental nature of these phenomena—e.g., what is it to be a member of a body politic? what is it to have or belong to a culture? what is the essence of capitalism as an economic form? PHIL 127 also surveys and critiques various explanatory approaches to social phenomena—including the evolutionary explanatory approaches that FYSP 181 delves into. Students will therefore engage in critically reflecting (in PHIL 127 ) upon the same investigatory practices that they learn to engage in (in FYSP 181).

Both FYSP 181OC and PHIL 127OC are required for enrollment in this learning community.

Course instructors for this learning community are Assistant Professor of Music Theory and Aural Skills Bryan Parkurst, and Professor of Biology Keith Tarvin.