Chris,
Of course. You are correct and I will go one further. We know that our concepts of physical, biological, and mental are inadequate. They are natural-kind terms that have no adequate definition. Our very ideas of the physical have been changing every few years ever since Newton. We probably have a more stable concept of the "mental" than we do of the "physical". Still I remain a skeptical "materialist" and my statement was one of materialist rational faith.
There are no perfect fits in the the biological world, and I take this as a reasonable conclusion from evolutionary theory. Given that our concepts of the physical, biological, and the mental, somehow (we don't know how) emerge from our limited biological brain/minds the fit between world and concept is bound to be loose. Hopefully, we may be able to someday come asymptotically close to an adequate understanding as we approach infinity. Call this my utopian hope.
And yet as I wrote in another post "my world view is that the mental is a special case of the biological as the biological is a special case of the physical." I can't prove this but it is the only way that I can proceed with rational investigation.
Finally, it is altogether possible to believe that there is such a phenomena as the "non-material mental", but if I believed this, I would also believe this "non-material mental" phenomena is not exclusively human and is a phenomena we share with other species and aspects of the universe that have "mental qualities," such as chimps and bacteria and the little strings of the universe that just might be "pieces of information." Basically, I am a Spinozist monist who chooses to think of the mental as, in the last instance, a special case of the physical.
But none of this effects my limited defense of sociobiology. I think it is better to study what humans have in common with other species in order to understand how and why we might be different than other species.
I take your comment as a good observation in the philosophical teasing and tickling of words in the world.
Jerry
>
> Anyway it seems to me that most of the asertions that
> soc bio is "just-so stories" could apply to a lot of
> evolutionary biology.
>
> "Dogs are pack hunters because hunting as a group was
> selected for due to its efficiency in downing prey."
>
> "No no no, the counterexample of the house cat proves
> that solitary hunting was selected for and is more
> advantageous. Pack hunting is an atavism that is
> doomed to die out!"
>
> BTW, Chuck, thanks for the kind comments Chuck G! I'll
> get back to you on them tomorrow.
>
> Nu, zayats, pogodi!
>
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-- Jerry Monaco's Philosophy, Politics, Culture Weblog is Shandean Postscripts to Politics, Philosophy, and Culture http://monacojerry.livejournal.com/
His fiction, poetry, weblog is Hopeful Monsters: Fiction, Poetry, Memories http://www.livejournal.com/users/jerrymonaco/
Notes, Quotes, Images - From some of my reading and browsing http://www.livejournal.com/community/jerry_quotes/