this was wrong, since I got carried away. It should have read: >This convention [of seeing sociobiology as one part of the biological explanation of "human nature" rather than being identical with it] is not just on the left: the "bad sociobiologists" equate their view with "sociobiology." (These bad sociobiologists go even further, to equate what they do with Darwinism in general.)<
Justin writes: :
> I don't think there's a "sociobiological school" any
> more than there is a "Marxist school" or even a
> "neoclassical school" (though that is closer). There
> are many people doing work in what might be broadly
> called the biological ex-explantation of human
> behavior, some share the most extreme reductionist
> leanings you attribute to the, other the conservative
> bias of ideologically justifying the social order.
Ideologically justifying the social order is a different matter from whether or not there is a distinction of schools between sociobiologists and other biological schools (e.g., Gould, Lewontin). Just because there are different schools of biology (as there are in my view) doesn't mean that there's a one-to-one correspondence of these schools with political schools. It seems a mistake to jump to the politics of this distinction.
Even among Marxist political economists, there's no one-to-one correspondence between theory and politics. For example, some people who think that the so-called "labor theory of value" is bunk have fine politics (in my view), while others who think it's the cat's meow sometimes have horrible politics. Etc.
The idea that there are schools or paradigms or "scientific research programs" (sociobiology, Marxism, neoclassicals, etc.) is a theory concerning the reality of actually-existing science or pseudoscience. It's a way of understanding the existence of some common patterns (or controversies) in the scientific or pseudoscience that persist over time and that people learn from and respond to. They aren't simply responding to a large mass of individual scientists or pseudoscientists. There's more to the whole than a bunch of individuals. Even individuals can do (bad) "sociobiology" at some times and more reasonable and holistic biology at other times. But within the general contours of the profession at any specific time, it should be clear which is being done at what time.
Justin seems to accept this idea, since he points to the (almost) existence of the neoclassical school above. Earlier, he pointed to the existence of the bad sociobiological school.
> These are not necessary coextensive: Dawkins I
> understand to be an extreme reductionist who is pretty
> left wing in his politics. Even the people doing the
> worst of both work sometimes have genuinely
> interesting explanatory things to say about human
> behavior in evolutionary perspective, as long as the
> more extreme claims are dropped, just as one might
> accept Marxist analyses while nor accepting Marxism's
> claim (according to be some) to be a totalistic world
> view that explains everything). And there are others
> who share neither problem. Anyway, more later, jks
I wasn't saying that all sociobiologists were bad (except to equate Justin's concept of "bad sociobiology" with the more generally accepted concept of "sociobiology"). I didn't say that Dawkins should be rejected. Nor should all sociobiological explanations be flushed. Rather, they are incomplete, one-sided, and thus _biased_.
BTW, Dawkins' radical reductionism fits well with his hard-core atheism. And there's a conceptual parallelism between the "bad sociobiology"/other biology distinction and the (hard-core) atheism/agnosticism (soft-core atheism) distinction. Not that we should expect a one-to-one correspondence here. -- Jim Devine "Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti." (Go your own way and let people talk.) -- Karl M., paraphrasing Dante A.