Introduction

What, then, are human interests? The book seeks to investigate and explain this complicated and largely overlooked question. It would be fruitless to try to define it beforehand. However, this would not be fruitless in the sense of redundancy, such as what this common phrase reflects: ‘it can’t be defined, but you know it when you see it’. Nor is it fruitless as in impossible to understand for some people, which is a point sometimes brought up concerning fine art. A famous example is how the iconic jazz musician, Louis Armstrong, responds when he is asked to define jazz: ‘if you gotta ask, you ain’t never gonna get to know’. For our purpose, a core intuition about human interests will do in this early part of the book, as long as our intuition is open to interests that go far beyond selfish, material interests. There is a rich history of ideas surrounding interests, and the term seems to have oscillated between a narrowly economic meaning, and a much wider sense that includes human passions. An excellent book by the economist Hirschman (1977/2013) goes in-depth in studying seventeenth and eighteenth century ideological reasoning about material interests. Instead, the point of departure of our book is, again, to analyse human interests in a far wider sense, echoing the French philosopher, de Silhon’s list of human interests, and, informed by the social, economic, and evolutionary sciences, possibly adding a few as well: ‘Interest of conscience, interest of honour, interest of health, interest of wealth, and several other interests’ (Silhon, 1661, 104-5). Nonetheless, as straightforward as the question – what are human interests – may seem, two things – at least – are puzzling about it. I have already mentioned the first thing: Aside from important examinations in philosophy and psychology in relative isolation, the question is rarely subject to systematic, empirical investigation and debate in large parts of the human sciences. Why? It seems that human interests are rejected from (self-)critical discussions in several human sciences, since human interests – beyond the most basic physical ones – are seen as raising only ‘ideological’ issues or as being a matter of personal taste. However, assumptions among scientists about human interests are central to how we formulate research questions, gather data about people and groups, and analyse the results. Human scientists can never ignore human interests. What happens is instead that most disciplines within the human sciences carry and reproduce implicit assumptions, intuitions, and common sense notions about human interests, without allowing these understandings to be scrutinised and revised. Second, while the social, economic, and evolutionary sciences share a concern with human interests, and whereas the relevance of these disciplines to human interests is one of the raisons d’être of these disciplines, their mainstreams have so far been highly unreceptive to cross-disciplinary lessons on this matter. This has been the case even where such lessons would entail an advancement of knowledge. These are only three among several examples that the book provides: Sociologists sometimes join the complaint among the general public about the inherent greed of corporate leadership (Clements, 2013; Lorenz, 2012). Although

the result of corporate bonus and salary systems is often perverse inequality compared to the resources of ordinary employers, sociologists often fail to see the underlying mechanisms. Evolutionary psychology as well as new developments in economics focusing on ‘the economy of esteem’ can be applied to the case in question: The core interest among corporate leaders is accordingly to be placed higher on the media list of successful corporate leaders than their colleagues in other corporations (Brennan & Pettit, 2004). Thus, vanity and relative success is the human driver here, not a fundamental interest in becoming infinitely rich. Greed and perverse inequality in relation to the general public are perhaps best described as (only) a symptom and a negative side effect. Instead of resigning, since one can rarely hope for a change of heart among business leaders, sociologists could discuss, based on the lesson from evolutionary, how the stable human interest in social status among business leaders – and among the rest of us – can be redirected – for instance through policy changes – to more constructive societal struggles. Whereas human vanity can never disappear, it may indeed be channellised in more humanitarian directions (Klintman, 2012a). Scholars with their academic background in traditional economics try to analyse people’s ‘willingness to pay’ for offsetting their CO2-emissions (Brouwer, Brander, & Van Beukering, 2008) or for improving the welfare of animals before slaughter (Kehlbacher, Bennett, & Balcombe, 2012). However, such studies sometimes rest on the assumption that willingness to pay reflects a relatively stable human interest. The assumed, relatively stable willingness to pay is based on the assumption of a stable economic rationality of seeking the maximum utility for one’s contribution of money, time, or other efforts. Instead, sociologically informed research shows that human interests behind, for instance, people’s willingness to pay are highly flexible between and within cultures, strongly influenced by volatile, situated social norms and conventions. Thus, the freshness date (and place) of willingness-to-pay studies run the risk of being extremely limited, unless they are coupled with sociological insights and longitudinal analysis. Scholars and policy makers with a narrow rational choice approach continue to call for more information about the health risks of sugar, fat, and smoking (Dallongeville, Dauchet, de Mouzon, Requillart, & Soler, 2011). However, such prescriptions, unless supplemented with other policy instruments, ignore the finding in evolutionary and social sciences that humans, to be sure, express interest in reducing such health risks. At the same time, people have a (more) fundamental, latent interest of sharing habits and conventions with our peers and with those with whom we want to identify ourselves (Confer et al., 2010). Thus, to further improve individual knowledge about health risks is insufficient for motivating individuals to reduce those risks unless the impact of people’s cultural setting is brought into the picture (Bolsen, Leeper, & Shapiro, 2014). All three examples suggest that each human science has been highly disinclined to learn from the other human sciences. This compartmentalisation is reflected in, for instance, the evolution-oriented science writer Shermer’s grossly over-generalising claim: ‘historians, sociologists, and many in the

humanities are “cognitive creationists” who assume that the mind, including intelligence, emotions, beliefs, and attitudes, is immune to laws of nature’ (Shermer, 1996, 66). From the other side, the eminent sociologist Collins reveals his a priori rejection of the evolutionary approach: ‘I am not interested in either pursuing or arguing with a rival research program that seems to me [my italics] to have limited explanatory resources’ (Collins, 2005, 227). Why this ‘proud ignorance’ and even intellectual xenophobia, as both these quotes imply? It would be naïve to believe that different approaches to human interests are merely different intellectual viewpoints in an innocent sense. Rather, their relation – or non-relation – reflects competition between rivalling cultural groups for the domineering explanatory story of, in this case, human interests and, by extension, competition for resources. While competition that is based on mutual learning can be creative and progressive, competition based on proud ignorance embraces the status quo, as in a continuous intradisciplinary recycling of knowledge claims. Moreover, it is old wisdom that one cannot fully understand even one’s own approach, unless learning with an empathetic mind-set about rival approaches. Mill is probably still to this day correct about ‘ninety nine in a hundred of what are called educated men’:

they have never thrown themselves into the mental position of those who think differently from them, [something that would necessitate supplying their real or imagined opponents] with the strongest arguments which the most skilful devil’s advocate can conjure up . . . and consequently they do not, in any proper sense of the word, know the doctrine which they themselves profess.