>>I argue in favour of keeping in mind that we're animal as well as conscious
>>beings. It's one of those things that gets you into all kinds of trouble
>>when you lose track of it. I also make a case for our ability to write our
>>more unlikeable animal tendencies out of our history. It makes sense that
>>this ability should express itself variously across varying conditions.
>
>On the other hand, were we the kind of being whose behaviors were
>susceptible to the kind of explanation favored by evolutionary
>psychologists, we wouldn't be seeing men like Randy Thornhill & Craig
>T. Palmer getting into rearguard action explaining rape as a product
>of evolutionary adaptation.
Lemme see if I got this right: If our behavior were in part a product of our biology Thornhill and Palmer wouldn't say it was? I must be missing something.
I haven't read Thornhill and Palmer. Would you like to say some more about them?
Human beings not only act, but we like
>to _explain_ and (moreover) _justify_ what we do. Which animal
>besides human beings has ever gotten around to justifying power
>relations with an appeal to "nature"? As Kenneth Burke says, we are
>symbol-making, symbol-using, and symbol-abusing animals, and in this
>respect we differ from other species, and the recognition of this
>difference is no disrespect for Darwin, nor does it equal to
>theoretical erasure of biology.
Because some of us abuse symbols, the rest of us shouldn't use them, then? Or, because we may misuse them ourselves, we shouldn't use them? I think not.
cheers, Joanna (who will be out of reach of email for the next three days)
www.overlookhouse.com