From: "cwright" <cwright-AT-21stcentury.net>
Subject: AUT: Re: socially determined human nature
Date: Mon, 2 Jul 2001 21:21:44 -0500


Ok, who was this a response to (for all I know it was me:)?

Second, I don't think that the 18th century French Materialists thought that
human nature was socially determined, so much as they approached it with a
kind of crude mechanistic approach, a kind of passive matterism.  Hegel did
not deny that we are socially determined beings to a great degree, but his
idea of socially determined differs radically.  Marx also argued that we are
socially determined, but in a way radically different from either the
Encyclopedists or Hegel because Marx saw us as historical beings, and saw
history as our product.  He criticized the 18th century materialists for not
understanding human beings as social and as historical and as the makers of
their own history in a collective, social way.  This is why Marx critiques
mechanical materialism for never being able to develop the active, social
side of human life, which always was left up to the idealists.

Third, the debate over nature vs. nurture is an ideological debate and as
such will not be resolved in this society.  In my opinion, it is a false
dichotomy because our biology plays an important role in our sociality, not
in some crude, reductionist way, but in ways best discussed by Richeard
Lewontin, Leon Kamin, Steven Rose, Stephen J. Gould, et al.  While Not In
Our Genes is a bit old, it is well worth reviewing, along with the
Dialectical Biologist, and a host of more recent work they have all done
separately since.

Cheers,
Chris
----- Original Message -----
From: "commie00" <commie00-AT-yahoo.com>
To: <aut-op-sy-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu>
Sent: Monday, July 02, 2001 2:17 PM
Subject: AUT: socially determined human nature


> > Most marxists cop an 18th century
> > french materialist line about human nature being
> > socially determined.  I think that is an error.
>
> i am fascinated that the new physics has said that they can find no other
> explination. that other theories don't seem to be able to hold water
> because....
>
> the research of most psychologiests can find no evidence of personality
> being other than social determined. even that which many people argue can
> not be (such as "genetic" diseases, etc.) can be explained by the state of
> the parents' (esp the mother's) body from the time of conception to birth.
> and given that the brain is most active when it first comes on-line
> ((sometime (i think) in the third trimester)) thru (i think) 2 years, the
> activities of the mother during pregnancy, and those who surround the
child
> in the first two years, can be understood as incredibly important.
>
> thus, as best as we can tell, everything is social determined. it is not
> necessarily an error, since the theories seemed to be being carried out by
> science.
>
> not that science is infallible, but that the attempts to collectively find
> out what's going on are important. and since people seem to have a hard
time
> finding something which is not socially determined, it seems an error to
> call the idea an error.
>
>
>
>
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