[lbo-talk] Altruism & Evolution?

Samuel Waite haymarket326 at yahoo.com
Sat Nov 27 20:55:07 PST 2004


--- Jim Farmelant <farmelantj at juno.com> wrote:


>
>
> On Sat, 27 Nov 2004 17:43:09 -0800 (PST) Samuel
> Waite
> <haymarket326 at yahoo.com> writes:
> > Similar ideas are advanced in the book Unto
> Others:
> > The Evolution and Psychology of Unselfish Behavior
> by
> > Elliott Sober and David Sloan Wilson. I recommend
> it.
> >
> > 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.
>
> The "human nature excuse" goes back to antiquity.
> Aristotle used it against Plato's proposals as
> presented in *The Republic* and *The Laws*.
> Aristotle also invoked the "human nature excuse"
> in his defense of slavery. According to him, some
> people are by nature - "masters" who are fit to
> command others while other people are "slaves"
> by nature who are only fit to obey orders. Those
> arguments along with many other arguments that
> similarly invoked the "human nature excuse" were
> quite popular in the antebellum South.
>

Of course. "The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas..."


> >
> > 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.
>
> I would draw a distinction between what is commonly
> called evolutionary psychology and what I would
> call Darwinian psychology. The latter seeks to
> understand
> the behaviors of human beings and other species
> from a Darwinian standpoint. The former is
> essentially
> a repackaging of the sociobiology of folk like E.O.
> WIlson
> that had been in vogue back in the 1970s. A good
> example of what I would call a Darwinian
> psychologist
> was the famous behaviorist, B.F. Skinner who sought
> to understand behavior using selectionist causal
> models.
>

I agree entirely. I'm loathe to even use the term evolutionary psychology because it implies that those who don't subscribe to it don't accept the reality of evolution.


> >
> > 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.
>
> Schlinger, also BTW published a critique of Pinker,
> a couple of years ago in the journal, Behavior and
> Social Issues. His article can be downloaded from
> http://www.bfsr.org/BSI_12_1/12_1schl.pdf
>
> I also wrote about Pinker at:
>
http://www.mail-archive.com/marxism-thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu/msg00572.h
> tml
>

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