Probbaly overlimit, last for the day, gotta bill anyway.
--- Chris Doss <lookoverhere1 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> I ave no idea
> what specific people claiming the EP label are
> claiming. If they are using it to to use it as an
> explanation for particular non-species-universal
> practices, that is clearly wrong. If they are using
> it
> to hypothetical explanations for species-wide
> behavior, I don't see what the problem is.
A mistake on both counts. You can explain universals without any serious explanatory reference to biology. Thus for example the current global triumph of capitalism has only the remotest connection to biology,a nd lots of universal behavior can be explained in terms of economic rationality, which may or may not have a biological basis, but could im principle stop there. In fact the economic rationality might be more fundamental, as John Maynard Smith has suggested.
Conversely, nonuniversal practices may well have a partially biological explanation. We have to remember thata biological trait is a propensity to manifest a characterstic in certain circumstances, and so where those circumstances are lacking, you wouldn't expect the trait even if it was biologically based. The tendency towards scurvey is biologically based, but only manifested where there is insufficirent vitamin C in the diet, for example.
>
Michael dawson
>
http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
>
No, it not uninformed. I teach many sociology classes
in which I make
students learn and cogitate about kinship societies.
I'm quite well
informed about the history of our species, thanks.
I'm not impressed. I used to take and teach classes about human behavior too, I have a lot of fancy wallpaper and have met many people who say uninformed things about matters about which they purport to be experts. Keeping people like that out of court is part of my job. And while you may be informed generally about the history of thes pecies, you do not seem to aware of what every biologist will tell you, that in species with our lifespan the 15,000 or so years of civilization has been to short to count from the point of evolution, as long as we don't blow ourselves up or poison ourselves real soon.
> And, speaking of caricatures, who on this list,
other than Cadet Cox,
believes that biology has no impact on human behavior?
Doubting EP is not all the same as dismissing biology.
You, for one, since you don't seem, to think there are any evolutionalty explanations of psychological or behavioral traits that are adequate and provable. Thsi position is the semi-jonest left version of rthe semi-honest right wing move that acknowledges that to biologically explain something is not to say that it is geneticallly determined, so unchangeable, so justified -- and then to go one and justify our most dispicable social practices as justified because unchangeable because biologically determined. Smart leftists who knwo some biology have a simialr tendency to say, _of course_ our biology has some effect on our behavior, and then to deny in every concrete case that it does.
So, please answer my questions:
1. What exactly makes our CNS hunter-gatherer? It obviously was formed under hunting-gathering,
That's what makes it hunter-gatherer,
but how does that explain the tight fit you see? Somebody (Marvin Harris maybe) I read thinks the best explanation of why our brains mushroomed is that increased size allowed us to keep chasing after wounded animals without overheating. That's a by-product of hunting, but you surely wouldn't say that distance-running is the main purpose of the homo sapiens brain, would you?
Sigh. We really don't know why people evolved large brains. Combined with walking upright and correspondingly small cervical capacity (so women's insides stay inside) it seems like a recipe for evolutionary disaster. It's amazing the whole species didn't die in childbirth.
But suppose Harris is right. You are talking Aristotlean talk with "purposes" rather than Darwinian talk, which is functional. If bigger brains helped our ancestors not overheat while running, having bigger brains may have incresaed the inclusive fitness of them as had them, thereby multiplying their descendents vis a vis their over-heating smaller brained cousins. That would be a textbook proper Darwinian explanation. Bigger brians were function, therefore selected for for that reason. (Well, apparently for some reason, anyway.)
> 2. Name an EP explanation that works and is
provable.
Won't play thsi game, there aren't any you will accept, you'll just raise the bar. My own view is that lots of human behavior, such as male promiscity and female (relative) fidelty, sexual jealousy and the double standard, the existence and incidence of homosexuality in the population, the more violent and reckless behavior of young males than any other group in the population, etc. have explanations with evolutionary biological components. Note the formualtion. I do not say that these behaviors are biologically determined, rigidly manifested in all environments, not changeable, or justified. Just that there is an obvious evolutionary component to the explanation.
Are these explanations provable? What do you mean? They are no more provable than any other evolutionary explanations. We can't reconstruct the traits with controlled experiments. We won't find specific genes that trigger these behaviors, they're too complex. But in that respect they are no worse off than most evolutionary explanation. As a general rule, evolutionary explanation is a bunch of just so stories. We probably will never know the actual details of the explanation. We just know that it has to involve an explanation of that sort.
> BTW, what is the contrast between EP and historical
materialism? If EP
works, wouldn't it be a supreme example of the
excellence of
explanations
that emphasize actually-existing material processes?
My point was not to contrast these kinds of explanations, but to warn leftists against accepting HM explanations with lower standards of proof than they demand of EP or SB explanations, or conversely, insusting on higher standards of proof for ES/SB explanations that they do for HM ones. How do we know that religion serves the interests of capital? Do we know thsi more certainly than we know that sexual double standard exists because men are driven to make surer it is their genes that are passed on and not some strangers?
Enough for me today.
jks
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