Philosophy of Science Series: Natural Human Philosophy – Part 1/5: BEYOND SURVIVAL AND REPRODUCTION: The Third Nature of Homo Sapiens and the Scientific Foundations of Human Philosophy

This is Part 1 of the "Philosophy of Science Series: Natural Human Philosophy" (Papers 1–5), a theoretical framework that integrates natural science (neuroscience, evolutionary biology, archaeology, ecology, and genetics) to address longstanding philosophical questions about human nature, ethics, and existence. Title: Beyond Survival and Reproduction: The Third Nature of Homo Sapiens and the Scientific Foundations of Human Philosophy Abstract: For over two millennia, philosophy has not yet achieved to achieve consensus on fundamental questions about human nature, morality, and existence. We argue this impasse stems from two insurmountable logical dilemmas inherent to speculative philosophy: the inability to guarantee the truth of deductive premises, and Additionally, the impossibility of deriving normative "ought" from descriptive "is" (Hume's problem). Drawing on Ernst Mayr's call for a "new philosophy of biology" and Edward O. Wilson's insight that human origins hold the key to understanding ourselves, we present Natural Human Philosophy (NHP) —a falsifiable theoretical framework for human philosophical questions grounded entirely in natural science—a framework established in our book (Yuan Additionally, The Third Nature—humans evolved at least 10 brain adaptors (insatiable curiosity, secondary reward processing, meta-representation, etc. ) constituting desires beyond survival and reproduction, unique in the animal kingdom; Furthermore, The Cultural Cloud—gene-culture coevolution driven by Third Nature created cumulative culture with blind mechanisms explaining civilizational dynamics. We integrate multidisciplinary evidence from neuroscience, archaeology, ecology, and genetics demonstrating convergence toward NHP's core claims. This framework offers philosophy a path forward—not by abandoning philosophical questions, but by addressing them with the rigor and progressiveness that characterized natural science's success. This preprint presents the core theoretical framework of Natural Human Philosophy (NHP), including three empirical cornerstones: Human Transgression, the Third Nature (a constellation of brain adaptors beyond survival/reproduction), and the Cultural Cloud (gene-culture coevolution driven by blind mechanisms). Supplementary materials: - Detailed neurobiological table and figures (included in this upload) - External anonymous peer review excerpt (provided in separate supplementary file for additional context; full version at SSRN link below) Keywords: philosophy of science, natural human philosophy, NHP, third nature, human transgression, cultural cloud, gene-culture coevolution, philosophy of biology, evolutionary anthropology, Ernst Mayr, Edward O. Wilson, Philosophy of Science, Natural Human Philosophy Related resources: - This is Part 1 of a 5-part series (complete). - See Part 2 at https: //doi. org/10. 5281/zenodo. 18661924 - See Part 3 at https: //doi. org/10. 5281/zenodo. 18664797 - See Part 4 at https: //doi. org/10. 5281/zenodo. 18664901 - See Part 5 at https: //doi. org/10. 5281/zenodo. 18664950- External peer review commentary on the series: https: //papers. ssrn. com/sol3/papers. cfm? abstractᵢd=6214758 License: Creative Commons Attribution 4. 0 International (CC BY 4. 0) Version: 1. 0 (February 2026)