Grant Ramsey, Notre Dame - "Human nature in a post-essentialist world"

In this paper I examine a well-known articulation of human nature skepticism, a paper by Hull (1986). I then review a recent reply to Hull by Machery (2008), which argues for an account of human nature that he claims is both useful and scientifically robust. I challenge Machery's account and introduce an alternative account the life-history trait cluster conception of human nature¿that I hold is scientifically sound and makes sense of (at least some of) our intuitions about¿and desiderata for¿human nature.