I call it sociobiology because that seems the most descriptive term and it is the one I am familiar with for many years. I prefer "sociobiology" to "evolutionary psychology," insofar as those are supposed to be the same thing because the latter has too individualistic a ring; the former at least underlines human sociality.
I agree that sociobiological hypothesis should be subject to peer review by anyone in any discipline that gives her/him the competence to discuss the ideas. Including philosophy: Phil Kitcher's Vaulting Ambition, a good demolition of a lot of bad ideological sociobiological one more or less pure scientific grounds, is an excellent. I think Kitcher goes too far in raising doubts about sociobiology per se, but his critiques are exemplary and almost always dead on.
* * * *
I wouldn't say that "our nuture dominates our nature because we are social" because I do not identify "nature" with "biology in abstraction from environment," a concept I have always insisted is incoherent. Our "nature" is the set of dispositions (some but not all more or less genetically based) we have to manifest traits and behaviors _in certain environments_. It is our nature to be selfish -- in competitive environments. It is out nature to be unselfish -- in cooperative environments. You can't leave out the environment from the concept of our nature. It's built in. It is therefore error to say that the environment or nurture dominates, trumps our "nature." It's part of our nature.
I have a (still-unpublished) paper on this that I can send to anyone who wants it; I'd appreciate comments if anyone has them. The paper, which I haven't done anything with for a bit but which I have been working on on and off for almost 20 years, proves hard to publish because 9a) people with biological backgrounds regard it as too obvious and self-evident to be worth publishing, and (b) people on the left regard it as a reactionary defense of the status qua, while (c) people on the right hate the fact that it argues that human nature does not, so far as we know, stand in the way of social change. So it ticks off everyone.
Meanwhile people -- even you, Charles -- keep making this false nature/nurture opposition. I really do have to get the paper published, not that it will stop this persistent error, but it may help reduce its incidence.
--- Charles Brown <cbrown at michiganlegal.org> wrote:
> andie nachgeborenen
> .
>
> Is it tedious to insist that just because some
> thinkers use biology to defect reactionary
> hypotheses,
> that does not damn the idea that the explanation of
> human behavior have a biological component to
> leftist
> hell? First, not all, not even most, sociobiology
> operates the way Charles suggests. Nor does it have
> to. I don't use it that way.
>
> ^^^^^^
> CB; Anthropology has biological, evolutionary
> explanations of human
> behavior. I studied Darwinian evolutionary
> principles, primatology,
> genetics, et al. when I was in anthropology.
> Anthropology is cultural
> anthropology and _biological_ anthropology. You
> know, Raymond Dart, the
> Leakeys, C. Loring Brace, Frank Livingstone,
> Wolpoff. Why is it that you
> call your hypotheses "sociobiology" and not
> "biological anthropology"?
>
> (Actually, some of the bio anthros have rightwing
> ideas, like Sarich . So,
> what I said earlier wasn't entirely accurate).
>
> There's something suspicious about studying and
> theorizing the same thing
> that bio anthros had been working on for decades ,
> but acting like they (
> not you) have founded a new discipline , and giving
> it a different name.
> There has to be some kind of academic politics
> involved.
>
> Hey, I saw something good from Wilson on global
> warming recently, so "all's
> forgiven". But I still think it doesn't make sense
> not to submit
> "sociobiology" and "evolutionary psychology" to
> anthropological "peer
> review".
>
> ^^^^^^
>
>
> Second, to the extent that some sociobiology may
> offer
> support for the fact there is a biological component
> to the explanation of less desirable human
> capacities,
> that may be true. It almost certainly is in fact
> true.
> If selfishness, etc. were not at least consistent
> with
> our biological capacities, these traits would not be
> realized in any environment.
>
> ^^^^^^
> CB; Yea, part of our natures are a persistence of
> the natures of ancestoral
> species. Prior species were more individualist. The
> main point is that the
> uniquely _human_ aspect of us is an increase in
> sociality , not
> individuality. In other words, the origin of the
> human species corresponds
> to an increase in sociality, not selfishness, as
> compared with prior
> species. In other words, bourgeois individualist
> values are a return to our
> more ape/monkey like natures, the opposite of what
> bourgeois anthropology
> claims.
>
> ^^^^
>
> Third, the ideological (setting aside the
> scientific)
> mistake in reactionary pop sociobiology is not
> biological. It is the anti-biological notion,
> inconsistent with biology, that if a trait has an
> explanation with a biological component that (a)
> that
> trait cannot be changed because it is rigidly
> manifested in all environments, and (b) is probably
> a
> good thing whose realization could be promoted.
>
> As I have explained repeatedly on this list, (a) is
> a
> confusion that shows complete failure to grasp the
> essentials of genetics or evolutionary biology
> because
> traits are always manifested in environments, some
> and
> not all, and are the result of genetic
> predispositions
> of an organism to behave in or manifest some traits
> given environmental circumstances that are favorable
> to the trait. Further, (b) is not a biological
> hypothesis at all but a sort of quasi-ethical one
> which is so ridiculous that it cannot withstand
> being
> stated. The capacity to be infected with plague or
> HIV
> is a result of our genetics (as well as, of course,
> our behavior), and is not a trait that is to be
> celebrated.
>
> ^^^^^^^^^^
> CB: I think I agree with you here. You might add
> that humans are famous for
> being able to "override" our instincts, for having
> "plastic" instincts; for
> having a lot of behavior that is socially, not
> biologically based. Our
> nurture dominates our nature, exactly because we are
> so social.
>
> I would add to your (a) and (b), (c) a lot of
> sociobiology seems to want to
> claim that bourgeois favored behavioral traits,
> especially selfishness, have
> basis in the history of _human_ biological
> evolution; and seemingly to
> counter anthropological findings and biological
> explanations of
> non-bourgeois behavioral.
>
> Here's a prime example. Humans are characterized by
> highly _socialized_
> labor as compared with other species. The bourgeois
> anthropological model of
> "Robinson Crusoe", isolated individual labor as the
> earliest human labor, is
> fundamentally wrong. Increased socialized labor
> increased human adaptive
> fitness at the origin of our species. The adaptive
> significance of language
> and culture is that they increase our sociality , in
> labor, and
> reproduction, and all around. So, that's an
> evolutionary biological
> explanation of human highly socialized labor,
> language and culture.
>
> Of course, not only that, but, capitalist production
> is, in fact, the most
> socialized labor in the history of the species. The
> division of labor is
> greater than ever before. The individual
> entrepreneur is _not_ the key
> component of the power of capitalist production; the
> world wide web of labor
> is. The fundamental contradiction of capitalism is
> the social nature of
> production contradicts the private (individual)
> nature of appropriation
> (private property). The bourgeois anti-social
> version of human nature is
> least true for bourgeois production itself.
>
> Anyway, I'm glad you are doing left sociobiology. I
> invite you to start
> considering yourself doing biological anthropology,
> which can be left too.
> That's what I do. Left bio anthro.
>
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