[lbo-talk] Altruism & Evolution?

[Samuel Waite]

I will say, though, that I haven't found anything in the annals of evolutionary psychology that I find particularly threatening to the Left project.  Sure, dreams of resolving all conflicts go down the drain, but there's nothing that I think renders EP's view of human nature incompatible with something like market socialism. 

ravi <gadfly at exitleft.org> wrote:joanna bujes wrote:
> Altruism only needs to be "explained" if you assume that the world is an 
> aggregate of (self-serving) individuals.
> 
> Big assumption.
> 

i do not know about economics, but at least in biology, its a very
powerful assumption in terms of its utility. which suggests to me that
the burden rests upon us to defend a more holistic model... no?

in another post, i wrote:
> a lot of very important work was done in the mid-20th-century against
> the notion of a complete, predetermined and unchanging inner nature that
> determines each individual's personality, position, etc. as i understand
> them, none of these authors oppose that work and to a large extent would
> like to extend the humanist/leftist tradition that motivates and
> benefits from such work.

after reading further posts on the thread (such as the one about
pinker's appearance at the AEI), i realize that perhaps i naively took
some of these gents (though not singer) at their word.

--ravi
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