<div>On 4/21/06, Wojtek Sokolowski <<a href="mailto:sokol@jhu.edu">sokol@jhu.edu</a>> wrote:<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;"> Again, why moi?  Emile Durkheim does that quite convincingly in the _Elementary Forms of the Religious Life_ in which he connects cognitive categories with social organization (which I believe is one of the most important contributions to philosophy since Kant.)  I believe Claude Levi Strauss & Co walk the same path - so why can't I?\</blockquote><div> Well it is simple.  You are making a huge category mistake if you think that you can connect cognitive categories to social class. I don't know how many times this mistake must be exposed in Levi-Strauss and Durkheim but it is a kind of absurdity.  Actually Chomsky has a long sympathetic disquisition apropos Levi Strauss in one of his early works on just this question and it is devastating </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;"> I used the term "class" in in its lexical sense meaning "set" ( e.g. a class of objects) to say that there have always been different classes (i.e. sets) of people and as a rule these sets had unequal social status, power or access to resources.  </blockquote><div> You use the word "class" in its lexical sense?  You mean to say that Bertrand Russell uses the word "class" in the same sense when he is writing about set-theory as when he is writing about the social category of "Power"?  You mean that the word "class" has the same connotation and denotation in both of these contexts?  This is absurd and hard to believe that you are serious.  Russell at least knew that using the term class when discussing logic or set theory is not the same as using the term class to refer to economic classes in the Roman Republic. Your definition is a display of confused thinking.  Now words can mean what you want them to mean so if you want to use the word class to only mean a set of objects then go ahead.  We will find a different word to refer to such notions as division of labor or ruling class or slave class, or what-ever.  But again you make a category mistake if you think that a set of numbers can be analyzed in the same way as very loosely defined categories such as economic and social classes.  And you make the same mistake when you conflate hierarchy with economic class. If what you say is true you will say that there are different economic "classes" of students between those who get "As" and those who get "Cs" and the hierarchy within a group of students is simply of the same significance as economic class divisions. This reduces the difference between notions of hierarchy and notions of economic and social classes to meaninglessness.  But, I think, that is what you wish to do. The only reason I can see that you wish to do so is because these category mistakes are tangled up with your view of humanity.  In other words it is a classic case of ideology trumping an attempt to have a clear discussion. If all these notions of "hierarchy" are at  the origin of brutal  economic exploitation and political violence, if you can simply conflate cognitive faculties with logical categories and social differences, then you can throw your hands up in despair and say "Human beings, they will always tear each other apart, and oppress each other and starve each other. So let them." That is your faith.  But don't confuse your muddy use of words with your faith.  And don't confuse the rather unclear conclusions that primatologists come to about the social structure of primates with your clear and absolute conclusions on faith that human beings are made to oppress each other. Finally, you simply do not understand the vast variety of primate societies and how the differences in hierarchy only show that there is much room for different kinds of equality among humans -- economic equality, political equality, sexual equality, democracy and cooperation.  Your brief commnets about primatology just don't show that you have thought about these issues in much depth.  "To wrap it up, I argued - and still stand by it - that divisions into distinct groups of unequal status and power are endemic to human societies, and hoping to eradicate these divisions and inequalities is unrealistic, utopian and naīve." Finally you don't argue at all but simply redefine things and make statements from the seat of Peter.  Jerry </div></div> -- Jerry Monaco's Philosophy, Politics, Culture Weblog is Shandean Postscripts to Politics, Philosophy, and Culture <a href="http://monacojerry.livejournal.com/">http://monacojerry.livejournal.com/</a> His fiction, poetry, weblog is Hopeful Monsters: Fiction, Poetry, Memories <a href="http://www.livejournal.com/users/jerrymonaco/">http://www.livejournal.com/users/jerrymonaco/</a> Notes, Quotes, Images - From some of my reading and browsing <a href="http://www.livejournal.com/community/jerry_quotes/"> http://www.livejournal.com/community/jerry_quotes/</a>