Date: Tue, 27 May 2003 22:27:07 +0100
From: Mervyn Hartwig <mh-AT-jaspere.demon.co.uk>
Subject: Re: BHA: [fyi] Baudrillard: The Violence of the Global


Shiv,

When we produce genetically modified people we won't do it with our 
genes, we'll do it with our socially produced scientific knowhow. Nobody 
denies that there are biological mechanisms and that there is a 
biological basis to social phenomena (we are after all animals belonging 
to one species). However, as Tim has argued, our biological capacities 
and drives are socially mediated. And why single out aggressive 
behaviour for genetic 'explanation'? How would you explain all our acts 
of co-operation, solidarity, creativity, love? To be consistent, you 
would have to say that they too are genetically determined, but then why 
does violence predominate at some times and not others? Why suicide 
bombing now? One can make an argument that the very process of 
biological evolution itself could not proceed if care and solidarity did 
not predominate over violence within animal, including human, 
communities. Bhaskar has a transcendental argument purporting to show 
that love etc has *ontological* priority over aggression etc (NB 
ontology is open, the realm of the possible not of fixed necessity). 
All our acts of oppression, exploitation, and violence are sustained by 
the creativity and love of people, but not vice versa - violence depends 
on love, is parasitical on it, but love doesn't depend on violence. A 
society without love and creativity is thus transcendentally impossible 
but we could well do without oppression and violence. Suicide bombers 
couldn't carry their plans through without the care and solidarity of 
friends and supporters, nor could Bush and Blair's bombers. I think this 
argument has a lot going for it. (NB, this doesn't mean that bombing 
people is an act of love, though it could be done from love: love is a 
motive rather than a quality of an act, i.e. we must distinguish here 
too between the actual and the real.

Mervyn

In message <20030525181305.25703.qmail-AT-web21209.mail.yahoo.com>, shiv 
kumar <iconoclast2050-AT-yahoo.com> writes
>Mervyn,
> 
>'It's all in our genes - how illuminating!' You end your e-mail by this phrase
>and I commence mine with the same phrase. The only difference is that
>in your statement, there is a pun intended and in my statement, a
>possible kernel of truth.
> 
>My previous e-mail was written with the aim of providing an alternate
>explication of aggression, terrorism et. al. That is what methodological
>precept of 'triangulation' is all about. When we start with an ontological
>position, and in the course of explanation, reach a point where there is a
>hiatus between it and the original ontological position, it requires a
>review of the ontological position-to reformulate it, to reconceptualize it.
>Where were the philosophical models, the peace plans, the theoretical
>concepts about peace before the Iraq episode? We are interested in
>theoretical constructs that have applicability in practice, irrespective of
>the fact whether they are from science or philosophy. According to
>Bourdieu, the 'logic of practice' has its own momentum and it would be
>erroneous to believe even the best and most coherent explication is
>cognate to reailty. I provided an argument which is meritorious as none
>other could explicate the Iraq episode. To repeat a point which many
>millions before have done is to arrive where they did, that is where we
>are now.
> 
>By the way, did you engage with my arguments about antecedent
>corporeal mechanisms? Is James Watson a knave who says that in
>another fifty centuries a genetically modified man is possible? We need
>empirical evidence to refute the arguments. And, for five centuries,
>Copernicus, Newton, Darwin,.......have been ridiculed for their views. It is
>just that they were men ahead of their times. Genetics also is a realm of
>possibility. Let science perform its tests. The counter arguments cannot
>be synthetically derived on the bases of incredulity or metaphysics. Thus
>my arguments are neither dogmatic or prejudiced. I want clear cut
>contrapuntal arguments--a point to point rebuttal based on empirical
>evidence for an emphatic rejection, but who has?
> 
>Shiv



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