Altruism

Two new studies suggest early altruism amongst chimpanzees (via 3 Quarks Daily) and human infants, even when knowing that cooperation may go without reward.

This might not be terribly interesting if it weren't for an entire Western economic and political conceptual and institutional edifice built upon the notion that humans are purely self-seeking, competitive, benefit-maximizing, individualistic organisms capable of rational behavior (where "rational" mean self-maximizing, even at times normatively so). Philosophers have long maintained that this edifice rests upon simplistic (see the vast human nature debate) and often highly selective (actually re-read your Adam Smith and Benjamin Franklin) assumptions about human behavior, human nature, and rationality or intelligence.

I don't want to dive into the philosophical debate here, but I will say that the idea that the common egoistic conception of human nature that undergirds much economic and political thought doesn't hold up simply by saying that, even if faulty, it works. Of course it does when your models are premised upon it and "it works" means that the models mirror human behavior within such institutions.

This is all simply worth pointing out as an idle Friday reflection. Personally, I think human nature (and rationality) - if we can say there is such a thing in the first place - is sufficiently complex that it cannot be reduced to a particular unitary conception. In this sense I am anti-essentialist, and pretty good evidence suggests that most of us ought to be.