ABSTRACT
I have argued that from the point of view of biological teleology, much characteristic human activity—while perfectly natural—falls outside the realm of proper functioning and is sometimes positively dysfunctional. What this means is that human nature, properly understood, is a complex mixture of different elements. On the one hand, some of our natural tendencies are of the sort purportedly explained (at least in part) by evolutionary psychologists and sociobiologists; among these some must be regarded from a functional point of view as vestiges of once functional traits, while others may retain their biological functions to various degrees, and still others may never have been functional, being only side-effects of other traits. On the other hand, other natural human tendencies stem from our possession of sophisticated reflective capacities, as discussed in the previous chapter, and from the point of view of biological teleology may well lead regularly to behavior that falls outside the scope of proper biological functioning.
