> [WS:] Miles, if you have nothing substantive to add to my speculation, could
> you at least refrain from ad hominems? I said exactly what I meant - that
> experience is the IV and neurological structure is the DV. I also know that
> there is empirical support for that proposition in some areas of cognition,
> and I can do bibliography research to find the refs (but so can you.) The
> speculative part is that I am not sure if that effect can be extended to the
> general experience of the environment.
I very diligently refuse to engage in ad hominem arguments. There are no ad hominem arguments in my above post. I was reacting to the following claim: "Cognitive frameworks may explain preferences", following from your statement about neurological structures. If by "cognitive frameworks" you mean neurological structures (a la Churchland), you're arguing that neurological structures are the independent variable that accounts for preferences. If by cognitive frameworks you mean thinking patterns, well, you're just using a tautological argument: people have thinking patterns that explain--thinking patterns.
> I sense that you are apprehensive about the idea of cognitive and
> psycho-motor differences among people being grounded in biology rather than
> solely in culture (learning), but a priori dismissal of the idea of inborn
> characteristics solely because some research in that area had questionable
> political connections in the past does not look like a very rational
> approach to science. For example, Noam Chomsky also took the 'inborn'
> position on language in his rebuttal of the learning only" behaviorism.
Instead of imputing motives, I encourage you to engage in the content of my posts. As I have stated many times on this list (check the archives!), we are indisputably animals that have evolved just as every other existing species on this planet. However, it is also a brutal empirical fact that biological explanations have been used in a variety of societies over at least the past two millenia to justify and reinforce social inequalities ("we dominate them because--they're biologically inferior to us"). This sordid ideological history of biological explanations for dominance does not automatically mean that every hypothesis about the biological causes of X is wrong; however, it does require us to very carefully assess and test biological claims.
From this perspective, claims about how people in culture X are "hardwired" to do Y should not be casually accepted. --In fact, the whole notion of "hardwired", for anyone who has studied neuroanatomy, is just goofy: if the environment shapes the structure of the brain, that demonstrates the plasticity of neural networks, not the fact that they are "hardwired". Moreover, if environment shapes neural structure and function, and this biological characteristic cannot be passed along genetically, in what sense is it "hardwired"? Even by the premises of your own argument, the idea that preferences for "open" or "closed" spaces" are biologically hardwired is logically incoherent!
Why not just say--people like the kind of environment they're used to? What does it add to the argument to smuggle in fanciful claims about how people in certain places are neurologically "hardwired" to like open or closed spaces?
Miles