Didn't we just go through this about six months ago?
^^^^ CB: Probably. If you do the research, you will probably find that all the threads on LBO-talk right now, August 2009, at this general level of discussion are continuations of threads you can find in the archives , or substantially overlap such that they wouldn't be off topic several, even many , times. ^^^^^^^ According to effectively all coherent, materialist anthropological research... well, Geertz says it nicely in his critique of stratigraphic or Maslowian searches for universals (in a chapter where he expressly takes on the idea of the universality of "incest" and "marriage"):
^^^^^^^ CB: Well, Geertz's description below is kind of thick (ha ha) ,but I'm going to have to disagree with Geertz on this point.
^^^^^^^^
"Whether it can or not depends on whether the dualism between empirically universal aspects of culture rooted in subcultural realities and empirically variable aspects not so rooted can be established and sustained. And this, in turn, demands (1) that the universals proposed be substantial ones and not empty categories; (2) that they be specifically grounded in particular biological, psychological, or sociological processes, not just vaguely associated with “underlying realities”; and (3) that they can convincingly be defended as core elements in a definition of humanity in comparison with which the much more numerous cultural particularities are of clearly secondary importance. On all three of these counts it seems to me that the *consensus gentium* approach fails; rather than moving toward the essentials of the human situation it moves away from them."
^^^^^^^ CB: Geertz's late life theoretical partner Sahlins puts kinship at the center of organizing "primary" cultures. I'm not sure how Geertz reaches the conclusions above, but it's pretty patent that all known societies have rules, taboos forbidding sexual relations between certain categories of relatives.
............
"My point, which should be clear and I hope will become even clearer in a moment, is not that there are no generalizations that can be made about man as man, save that he is a most various animal, or that the study of culture has nothing to contribute toward the uncovering of such generalizations. My point is that such generalizations are not to be discovered through a … search for cultural universals, a kind of public-opinion polling of the world’s peoples in search of a *consensus gentium* that does not in fact exist, and, further, that the attempt to do so leads to precisely the sort of relativism the whole approach was expressly designed to avoid. … What, after all, does it avail us to say, with Herskovits, that “morality is a universal, and so is enjoyment of beauty, and some standard for truth,” if we are forced in the very next sentence, as he is, to add that “the many forms these concepts take are but products of the particular historical experience of the societies that manifest them”?7 "
^^^^^^^^ CB: All humans have language. That's a universal. I think Geertz seems to be playing the "interesting" universal game. The thing sought has to not only be universal, but interesting to the professor. He seems to admit that morality is a human universal, or enjoyment of beauty or some standard of truth, but these facts don't "avail" us (smile).
Well, they avail us in the discussion on this thread, because all three examples are the application of abstract principles, including abstract moral principles to behavior. In fact, come to think of it, here Geertz mildly , impliedly contradicts Miles claim that "morality" or application of abstract moral principles to behavior is not universal in human society. Geertz doesn't say that Herskowitz is wrong. Geertz just says that Herskowitz doesn't avail us.
The point is not that there are no specific moral principles that are universal, sort of, but that there are always some form of moral principles, i.e. abstract ideas guiding conduct in every human society that Geertz and the rest of us know about. Other species can't organize themselves based on abstract ideas. Humans can and do universally.