I have even written a paper on this which I cannot seem to get published anywhere (reviewers say it is either too obvious or self contradictory), but which I will post gratis in hard or soft copies to anyone who requests it.
Therefore I refuse to accused of missing this point. Anyone who says I miss this point doesn't understand my point. If you don't want to read the damn paper, google the archives on my name and "human nature," in which I have explained the basic idea in much more plain language than Jim has here, literally for years. Probably for at least a decade.
So: I am not a total reductionist wrt to sociobiology. No good SB is. There is bad SB. There is bad economics. That doesn't mean we damn either discipline, just its bad practice. OK? (I am becoming annoyed, sorry, Jim.) SB is a tool. It has its uses. It offers powerful partial explanations of various important aspects of human behavior.
jks
--- Jim Devine <jdevine03 at gmail.com> wrote:
> I asked: >> why do we have to speak
> sociobiologically?<< [speling corrected]
>
> On 6/2/05, Justin answered: > Because sociobiology
> offers a powerful
> if partial explanation of various aspects of human
> behavior. It
> doesn't have much much to contribute to an
> understanding of the
> dynamics of capitalism ... but if you are interested
> in why women have
> (the equipment to) orgasms, what other explanatory
> resources would you
> deploy? Intelligent design? Cultural construction?
> What is the
> allergy to biological explanation? Yes, I know, it
> is often used for
> conservative purposes. But the, economics isn't?<
>
> There's a logical slip in the middle of this
> paragraph, i.e., the
> implied equation of "sociobiology" with "biological
> explanation."
> Others have mentioned S.J. Gould, who had a
> biological explanation but
> wasn't a sociobiologist. There are a lot of others,
> though
> sociobiology is quite fashionable these days.
>
> The logical slip then implies that the only
> alternatives to the
> sociobiology school are silly (intelligent design,
> cultural
> construction) and that I might suffer from an
> "allergy to biological
> explanation."
>
> Why do you say that sociobiology offers a "powerful"
> explanation? As
> one alternative biological explanation, we could
> turn to Levins &
> Lewontin, who point to three "moments" (my word) of
> such an
> explanation. (1) individual parts of a biological
> system (e.g.,
> individual genes) create the whole [the
> sociobiological "moment"]; (2)
> the whole (e.g., an organism) shape the effects and
> role of the parts;
> and (3) these two form a dynamic system. They see
> this not as a
> formula for pre-packaged answers, but as a heuristic
> (a tool for
> investigating the world) and a weapon against
> dogmatism.
>
> The sociobiologists willfully ignore the second
> "moment," hoping to
> attain a totally reductionist explanation. They end
> up with
> essentially static understanding, since (3) is
> largely a matter of
> "external shocks" (environmental change).
>
> Relatedly, sociobiology wants to reduce everything
> to natural
> selection, ignoring such matters as genetic drift.
> One-cause theories
> are always popular, but are akin to the
> crude-Marxist explanation of
> all society by the "economic base" which itself
> explained totally by
> the "forces of production."
>
> > Bottom line: we are animals, descended from
> > Pleistocene hunter gatherers, whose central
> nervous
> > systems are basically designed for life that sort
> of
> > life in small groups in the African veldt.
>
> FWIW, _The Madness of Adam and Eve: How
> Schizophrenia Shaped Humanity_
> by David Horrobin, M.D., argues that people are
> descendents of people
> who lived by rivers and lakes.
>
> >The ten or
> > fifteen thousand years we've been civilized is
> > evolutionarily irrelevant, no significant natural
> > selection can take place in such a period (apart
> from
> > out not-too-improbable self-extinction).
>
> instead, cultural (including technological)
> evolution has taken the
> center stage, limitng and shaping the role of
> biological evolution
> (natural selection).
>
> > We are not just animals, we are social beings and
> our
> > social interactions explain a lot of our behavior
> > holding the biology constant. But it would be
> pretty
> > strange if 2.2 million or so years of evolution
> had no
> > explanatory relevance to our behavior.
> Particularly
> > when biologically central questions are concerned.
> And
> > if orgasm isn't biologically central, what is?
>
> again, this falls for the logical slip referred to
> above, the equation
> of sociobiology with biological explanation.
>
> As for biological explanation of female organism, I
> gave mine a while
> back: males and females are essentially the same
> kinds of creatures,
> co-evolving almost as a unit and sharing many
> characteristics
> (nipples, orgasms). They are clearly different, too,
> distinguished by
> the various hormones that flow through are veins as
> a result of the
> extra X or the substitute Y chromosome. (Pre-op
> male-to-female
> transexuals suppress testosterone (etc.) and take
> estrogen (etc.) and
> end up being pretty "feminine" despite having a
> diversified set of sex
> chromosomes.)
> --
> Jim Devine
> "Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti." (Go
> your own way
> and let people talk.) -- K. Marx, paraphrasing Dante
> A.
>
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