[lbo-talk] Noam 1, Israelo-apartheid 0

[Alan Rudy]

Lewontin's piece is very good.
Charles' argument makes too strong a distinction between nature and culture
for my tastes.
As always, Raymond Williams, RG Collingwood, Clarence Glacken, Keith Thomas,
Terry Eagleton, Neil Smith, Gayatri Spivak, Donna Haraway, Bruno Latour and
any number of others have generated far too many far too empirically and
logically strong sets of ideology critiques of ideas of and practices
relative to nature and ideas of and practices relative to culture for me to
see the terms as anything other than reguarly mutually redefining terms.
Lastly, the problems with the terms altruism and love, much less sociality,
are exactly the same as those of nature and culture.  Is altruism mutualism,
commensualism, sociality, some melding of the three, what.  I may think that
humans are qualitatively different from animals but I certainly don't think
any on or small set of culture-bound and historically variable terms like
these define the difference.

On Fri, May 21, 2010 at 5:25 PM, Carrol Cox <cbcox at ilstu.edu> wrote:


> I think  Lewontin has recengly written a pretty devastating critique of
> the metaphor of "natural selection," pointing out that it confuses
> professional biologists as well as lay people. It just isn't useful  in
> general conversation and it is of doubtful use in technical discussion
> or thought.
>
> Charles is too anxious to have a foundation. Actually Arendt took care
> of this a half century ago  in her discussion of the (no-existence of)
> the Archimedean point.
>
> Carrol
>
>
>
> Miles Jackson wrote:
> >
> > c b wrote:
> > > ^^^^
> > > CB  On this, do you consider that _any_ human psychological
> > > characteristics are the result of natural selection, or that none at
> > > all are ? I would say that altruism bestowed naturally selective
> > > advantage on humans.  Our high level of sociality is adaptive in the
> > > Darwinian sense . This is the exact opposite of bourgeois social
> > > "darwinism".
> > >
> >
> > As andie repeatedly points out (on hiatus?), you can make up any kind of
> > just-so stories you want about the "selective advantages" of
> > characteristic X.  That kind of data-free speculation doesn't contribute
> > at all to testing or evaluating modern evolutionary theory.  Similarly,
> > concerning the tired nature/nurture debate you allude to above: the only
> > reasonable response to the question, "Are human psychological
> > characteristics the result of natural selection, or are none the result
> > of natural selection" is "yes".
> >
> > > CB:  I think we should take a different approach.  We should argue
> > > that humans' sociality and culture bestowed adaptive advantage on our
> > > species, and that , if not "justice", then "love" and altruism  are
> > > part of the original human essence. I use "essence" instead of
> > > "nature", because I'm saying that culture, that defining
> > > characteristic of our species, is fundamentally social and altruistic.
> > > (Or it was; it has turned into its opposite in many ways with the rise
> > > of class antagonistic society).
> > >
> >
> > Well, we can make up any narratives we want.  Just don't call it
> > empirically validated evolutionary theory.
> >
> > Miles
> > ___________________________________
> > http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
> ___________________________________
> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
>

-- 
*********************************************************
Alan P. Rudy
Dept. Sociology, Anthropology and Social Work
Central Michigan University
124 Anspach Hall
Mt Pleasant, MI 48858
517-881-6319