I've avoided posting in the "Darwinian Left" thread because I prefer to lurk and didn't want to get drawn into a protracted debate with any Singer sympathizers.
The topic interests me a great deal, however, and I try to keep abreast of current developments.
Shortly after I first got involved with radical politics, I became aware of what I came to call the "human nature excuse" -- we can't have a more just, free society because it's "against human nature". Partly out of curiosity and partly out of a desire to amass ammunition against such arguments, I started spending a lot of time reading up on this stuff.
My research led me to a great skepticism toward biologistic explanations of human behavior, which I maintain. I read The Blank Slate after being assured by everyone from The Nation to the National Review that it was the best possible case for biologism that could be made. If this is true, then I can only assume that in 20 years, most of what's now called evolutionary psychology will have gone the way of the dodo.
One scholar whose reaction to that book was very similar to my own is psychologist Hank Schlinger, whose article "The Almost-Blank Slate: Making a Case for Human Nurture" in the current issue of Skeptic I also recommend.
--- Kevin Robert Dean <qualiall at adelphia.net> wrote:
> The sample this study used was small, so take it for
> what it's worth in these current discussions.
>
> Contact: Meg Sullivan
> megs at college.ucla.edu
> 310-825-1046
> University of California - Los Angeles
>
> UCLA study points to evolutionary roots of altruism,
> moral outrage
> If you've ever been tempted to drop a friend who
> tended to freeload, then you have experienced a key
> to one of the biggest mysteries facing social
> scientists, suggests a study by UCLA
> anthropologists.
> "If the help and support of a community
> significantly affects the well-being of its members,
> then the threat of withdrawing that support can keep
> people in line and maintain social order," said
> Karthik Panchanathan, a UCLA graduate student whose
> study appears in Nature. "Our study offers an
> explanation of why people tend to contribute to the
> public good, like keeping the streets clean. Those
> who play by the rules and contribute to the public
> good will be included and outcompete freeloaders."
>
> This finding -- at least in part -- may help explain
> the evolutionary roots of altruism and human anger
> in the face of uncooperative behavior, both of which
> have long puzzled economists and evolutionary
> biologists, he said.
>
> "If you put two dogs together, and one dog does
> something inappropriate, the other dog doesn't care,
> so long as it doesn't get hurt," Panchanathan said.
> "It certainly wouldn't react with moralistic
> outrage. Likewise, it wouldn't experience elation if
> it saw one dog help out another dog. But humans are
> very different; we're the only animals that display
> these traits."
>
> The study, which uses evolutionary game theory to
> model human behavior in small social groups, is the
> first to show that cooperation in the context of the
> public good can be sustained when freeloaders are
> punished through social exclusion, said co-author
> Robert Boyd, a UCLA professor of anthropology and
> fellow associate in UCLA's Center for Behavior,
> Evolution and Culture.
> Full:
>
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2004-11/uoc--usp112404.php
>
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>
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