[lbo-talk] Bonobo you don't

James Heartfield Heartfield at blueyonder.co.uk
Mon Apr 30 09:26:04 PDT 2007


Jerry Monaco's reductio ad absurdem:

'more importantly there is no clear divide between modern homo sapiens and our ancestor species'.

Really? No clear divide? The divide that is obvious to everyone is the very thing that - as a matter of principle - you refuse to recognise: human civilisation. (What you mean is there is no clear biological or genetic divide, which is of course true, we are the same biological species.)

Just imagine how intolerable it would be to an historian to read the late and mid-Victorian eras confused, and you will get some hint of just how ignorant it is to assert that there is no difference between the 21st century and 30 000 B.C..

What you demonstrate is that your theory is methodologically incapable of addressing the subject-matter of history, and the development of human civilisation.

"Is there any evidence at all that will convince you?"

I think I said already. When Chimpanzees take part in human culture and politics (or we in theirs) then we can assume that they are the same.

'Now the term "culture" and the term "politics" are not scientific terms, no matter how hard we try to make them so.'

Clearly, you do not understand culture, or politics, which are real subjects of enquiry with disciplines dedicated to their study. They are not defined in natural science, because they are not part of nature, but society. All of which makes your suggestion that 'primatologists are warranted in calling this phenomena "cultural"' specious.

Since you refuse objectivity to the concepts culture and politics, you really ought to lay off them, and leave them to those who study these things, instead of subsuming the rich complexity of their work to your dumb formulae.

There is some inkling of understanding in the following:

"It is my belief that we call culture is a subset of biological processes though not _necessarily_ reducible or understandable by analysis of biological processes. It is also my belief that the biological is a subset of "physical" processes but that the biological is not necessarily reducible to physical processes."



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