--- Chris Doss <lookoverhere1 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> Hey, how is it that homo sapiens sapiens is
> apparently
> the only gendered species in the world that has
> somehow miraculously escaped behavioral relations
> between the genders being influenced by biology?
Hi Chris,
All good points that you make here. The contemporary leftist aversion to evolutionary and biological explanations for human behavior, is, as Steven Pinker points out in his useful _The Blank Slate_, a result of the fact that many leftists are unable to separate "is" from "ought." Just because something is "natural" does not mean that it is socially desirable.
I wish more lefties would take up the call in Pinker's book to integrate the insights of evolutionary psychology into progressive politics. Refusal to do so just allows the Right-wingers to benefit precisely from the above-mentioned is/ought fallacy, with specious comparisons between the competition of the "free market" (a socially constructed institution if ever there was one) and the process of natural selection.
I'm not arguing for a biological reductionist position to explain social institutions. I think there's still valuable incites to be gleaned by figures like Judith Butler on issues subject constitution and such. I just think many leftists need to pull their heads out of their asses and stop merely relying on "correct" scientists like Steven Rose or Richard Lewontin to counter the claims of evolutionary psychology, as if natural science is about the search for the correct "line." Critiques of science as a social institution are valid, but that doesn't address the claims of empirical research.
In any case, Carrol'`s "embarassment" for you is just another case of him playing the commissar, which is his thing on this list.
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