Jerry
^^^^^ CB: I read some ev psych recently that seemed to differentiate itself from sociobiology/naked ape reductionist shortcomings. Some ev psych may avoid bourgeois individualist or Robinsonade or "rugged individualist" errors too, unlike sociobiology, et al.
Sociobiology has no basis for establishing a discipline outside of already existing anthropology. Ev psych seems to be founded by anthropologists, the Toobys.
For humans, culture creates a LaMarckian-like dynamic. Culture allows a type of "inheritance of acquired characteristics". Adaptions by culture are not limited by Mendelian principles, but are still Darwinian limited.
As to "selves" and self-determination, my first thought is that individualism is what we _share_ with other species, other primates. Our ancestor primate species are _more_ individualistic, more Robinson Crusoe-like than the human species. There are , of course, human individual members of the species. But in terms of evolution , which implicitly must refer to a transformation from one species to another, the human species has evolved from a more individualistic ancestor species to a more cooperative or social species relative to that ancestor species ( which is the only _evolutionary_ issue). Apes have self-determination, and we continue to have it. But the main evolutionary thing about ourselves , our self-determination and our individual psyches is that there are much more influenced by other individuals, by the human social, by culture, which is a social connection to dead generations of our species. "Psychology" suggests attention to the changes in the individual in our species evolutionary history. Again, in that respect the main thing to note is that human individuals are more social than ape individuals.
The human species name should be _Homo communis_, not _sapiens_. "Sapiens" softly implies that it is individual brain capacity to reason that is the evolutionary change to humans. No, it is capacities and inclinations of individuals to work as a group, to live socially, to live communisitically that is the _revolutionary_ leap to the species human. The significance of the human individual brain is its capacity to "packin" all those social connections, to basically put a whole lot of other individual brains "into" one brain. That is the signal characteristic of _the_ human psyche.
^^^^^ Ted Winslow :
"Evolutionary psychology" and "sociobiology" entail a form of determinism that excludes self-determination in the sense indicated by the ideas of a "will proper" and a "universal will". These ideas underpin Marx's idea of ideal human relations - relations of mutual recognition. So the "human capability" realized in these relations a capability for self-determination - can't be explained by that form of determinism.
Ted
^^^^^ CB: I noticed some ev psychology that does not contain the shortcomings of "sociobiology". Will go back and look again.
The interesting question is whether there is a biological component to humans' super-sociality in comparison with other primates and species.
I saw a discussion of autism. Autism seems to involve a biologically based ,lower capacity for forming social relationships, relationships with other humans. Could autism be due to congenital/developmental causes or genetic mutations that lessen the biological component for affinity to sociality, which component was evolved at the origin of the species homo sapiens ?
Is there a biological component in the unique human capacity to form relations of mutual recognition ?