> From: Chuck Grimes
> Subject: Re: Selfish genes & population demographics
>
> ``...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.
>
Believe what stuff? Darwinism? The people that don't believe in that are
called Creationists. Not you, I presume. Oh, I see - you mean
sociobiology. The book (_Sociobiology_, E.O. Wilson) is a properly
referenced text, Chuck. It is biology - it's not pretending to be. It is
science.
(To get ahead of myself on posts here, this will get many of you jumping up and down. Don't bother. You _think_ you know what sociobiology is about, because you've seen some nut indulge in a psuedo version of it so that they might slag off blacks, women and so on. I've looked at its seminal text. Put shortly it's about social behaviour IN ANIMALS. There's a highly general and speculative chapter on mankind at the end of the book, about the sole value of which is that it puts paid to the stereotypes walking the planet about this discipline. And any of you who think it's about reducing culture to nature or something similar, just get that out of your head. I'll post later on this, from the horse's mouth. Okay?)
First, there wasn't any appeal to authority. Carrol said the terms were 'useless' for biological analysis; I said they were used a great deal, and gave an example: Wilson talking about altruism. So my question was - in what sense are the terms useless? Incidentally, Carrol seems to objecting to the names, not the concepts (correct me if I'm wrong - I read once, and quickly), as I believe you are - see below.
> 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.
>
You're missing the whole point. I said altruism was a technical term.
Didn't that set off alarm bells? Fitness is a technical term as well.
It's got a precise and limited meaning. An organism is genetically fit
relative to others of the same species if it is able to increase the
relative frequency of occurrence of its genes in a susequent generation.
That's ALL it means. It's a useful piece of shorthand. It doesn't mean
fat white guys should rule the earth, or women belong in the kitchen, or
the physically disabled should be packed off to a KZ. Anyone who uses
the term in this sense is a bullshitartist.
While Carrol may well be right about the bad faith of many of the people who originated these terms that now dominate discourse in biology, I don't want to see people chuck out the baby with the bathwater. I think people on the left tend to do exactly this - instead of calling out people who use these terms totally out of context, they respond by taking right-wing cranks at face value and rounding on the actual science. I think you're doing it now - you object to THE NAME, but you wouldn't object to the concept if it was called something else. If 'genetic fitness' was known as 'squibbly futmtch' instead, I'm sure we wouldn't be having this exchange.
> 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.
>
I'd disagree here. The things I'm referring to are technical terms -
definitions. No one argues over definitions (by definition - they're
conventional) (for comparison consider Chomsky's comments to the effect
that real scientists don't argue over methodology - oops! Appeal to
authority!) No biologists are arguing over what 'fitness' or 'selection'
mean. These are working concepts. Instead, they will argue over
hypotheses constructed using the definitions e.g. at what level does
selection take place? gene? Individual organism? Group?
> If you want, why don't you post an article or put up a url and let's go
> into this.
>
> Chuck Grimes
>
Yeah. I'll post a selection from Wilson. If you can stay awake through
it, and decode it without the aid of the glossary, you'll see everything
you've been told about the great bogeyman sociobiology is shite.
Eric