Chuck Grimes wrote:
>
> ``...The point being simply this - you say the terms are 'useless' ,
> but they are extensively used in the literature (e.g. a whole chapter
> titled Group Selection and Altruism in the text above) and indeed seem
> pivotal concepts. Useless, then, in what way?..'' Eric Leher
>
> ------------
>
> If you believe any of this stuff, you might want to reflect on the
> possibly that others, don't. Just because it's in print and called
> biology or science, doesn't make it so. Appeal to authority doesn't
> cut it.
Preliminary: Eric has a point, since I sort of violated one of my own personal rules against non-scientists (in this case non-biologists) making declarations re the science from outside.
But I could (and should) have made a point similar to the one Chuck makes here. "Altruism" is a metaphor drawn from social science. Now there is nothing wrong with that in principle. A good deal of quite useful technical vocabulary is a metaphor from some other field. But "altruism" is a particularly explosive term, and in choosing a technical vocabulary there ought to be some care in choosing words that can without too much difficulty be disentangled from their original contest. In the present case, I am a bit leary of the good faith of the biologists who introduced this particular metaphor. He/she/it _intended_ it to carry the message that social features could be/were genetically determined: that (to use an infamous bit of horseshit from this list as an arbitrary example) older men married younger women because it was in their genes to pick females who could bear more children. Altruism is a technical term from positivist sociology which has both entered into popular discourse (absent any critique) and _then_ been adopted by biologists to describe behavior which has nothing to do with choice, consciousness, social relations, etc etc etc.
Kenneth Burke notes Veblen's tendency to pick derogatory terms as technical terms, all the while assuring his reader that he means nothing invidious but is just being objectively scientific.
Suppose I were to define "motherfucker" in my technical terminology as referring to anyone who used the term "middle class." Then I could comfortably refer to those motherfuckers Chip Berlet, Kelly Walker, Chuck Grimes (?) all the while assuring my readers that I wasn't being invidious, it was a perfectly value-neutral technical term.
So I suspect the biologists ought to find another technical term (another less prejudicial metaphor). "Altruism" is sacred to to bourgeois pseudo-social science and can't usefully be torn from that context.
Carrol
>
> Just start with the definition, ``the surrender of personal genetic
> fitness for the enhancement of personal genetic fitness in
> others''. Personal isn't the only loaded word in that
> sentence. Surrender? Fitness? Enchancement? Others? The only
> non-controversial words in that sentence are the articles.
>
> In the past, in other sciences there were great philosophical debates
> that went on for decades before some of the words and concepts were ever
> considered well understood and accepted. That is not the case here.
>
> If you want, why don't you post an article or put up a url and let's go
> into this.
>
> Chuck Grimes