Meeting Topic Brainstorm

Leave a comment with suggestions for possible topics. Feel free to indicate areas of special interest or expertise or resources you think would be especially helpful in facilitating discussion on a certain topic. I will compile the topics into a master list, and then we can vote to determine actual topics.

Meeting on 1/27: Human Nature

Alyosha has volunteered to present on and facilitate a discussion about
human nature, as it relates to his future topic of Transhumanism. Quoth alyosha:

"Since HN has long been and often remains misunderstood and out of
fashion within academe (esp humanities/leftie types), i'll focus on
defending a contemporary evolutionary psychological version.

If you want to prep before we meet, i'm coming from somewhere generally
along the lines of
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Blank_Slate
http://www.amazon.com/Blank-Slate-Modern-Denial-Nature/dp/0142003344
This work is esp good because he deals with recent academic/leftie
rejections of HN; tho oc i don't agree with him on everything.

And because critiques of HN (or outdated versions of HN being
critiqued) tend to be biologically oversimplified, it's worth glancing
at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norms_of_reaction
Likewise, since i'm mostly going to try to argue for the legitimacy and
truth of a broad idea of HN, it might be stimulating to glance down
this list:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_universals
I'm not attached to this list, but it might serve to get the wheels
turning re the general point that humans occupy a small subset of the
space of possible "species natures" (term not used in the marxian
sense, btw).

If you want to read more (tho don't feel at all obliged), you might
start with:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_nature
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/evolutionary-psychology/
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/sociobiology/

Ok!; sharpen your knives, and i'll see you there!"