File spoon-archives/marxism-international.archive/marxism-international_1996/96-11-06.190, message 59


Date: Mon, 4 Nov 1996 20:51:35 PST
Subject: Re: M-I: Re: Should we let up on the pomos?
From: farmelantj-AT-juno.com (James Farmelant)


 Paul Gallagher <pcg-AT-panix.com> on
 Mon, 4 Nov 1996 05:33:51 -0500 (EST) offered me the last word so here
goes. He wrote:

>
>So far as I know, no one has ever located a gene for any 
>non-pathological
>human behavior. No one has ever measured the fitness of any human 
>behavior.

I agree that no one has ever located genes for non-pathological behaviors
but then again did Dawkins ever claim otherwise?
 
>> socio-cultural evolution by breaking down culture into memes.  Memes 
>in Dawkins' view are replicators just as
>> genes are and they are both susceptible to evolution by natural
>> selection.  You may  still find such a view to be overly 
>reductionist but it is not necessarily a genetic reductionism.
>> 
>
>It's interesting that even George C. Williams in his 1993 book rejects
>the analogy between ideas and genes. At the very least, the pattern of
>inheritance is completely different. But to be honest I haven't given 
>any
>thought to memetics, since I think of it as pop science nonsense.
>Perhaps I'm wrong, but I feel no great urge to go out and learn about
>memes. If I did, I'd examine Karl Popper's writings on evolutionary
>epistemology first. 

Certainly memetics as Dawkins has admitted  bears a resemblance to Popper's evolutionary epistemology.  Since you feel no great urge to learn
memetics you might
instead want to look at Alan Carling's article "Analytical Marxism and
Historical  Materialism: The Debate on Social Evolution" in Science &
Society (Spring 1993). 
Carling presents a selectionist interpretation of historical materialism.
 While Carling
makes no references to Dawkins (or Popper for that matter) his elaboration of what he calls Competitive Primacy (of the productive forces over the
relations of production) is very close in spirit to memetics.  For
Carling the Marxian theory of history is analogous to Darwinism.  Just
as Darwinism joins theories of the origins of
variations with a selectionist account of their subsequent fate so for Marxism class
struggle is seen as the source on new variations in regimes of production
while selection pressures (from competition with both nature and with rival regimes of production) are responsible for their subsequent history.



>
>> There is an essential difference between someone like Dawkins and
>> thinkers like
>> Heidegger or Derrida and that is that despite whatever faults one 
>might
>> perceive in 
>> Dawkins' theories he is committed to Enlightenment values like 
>reason and 
>> science.  
>Well, let's put aside Dawkins for a moment. Try Herrnstein or 
>Darlington or 
>Rushton - they  also say they are committed to reason and science.
>Or take most of bourgeois social science. They also believe in 
>science.
>I see them as all the more dangerous because of it. Promoting 
>falsehoods
>isn't good, even if done in the name of science and reason. 
 
I pretty much agree with you here but I would point out that people like
Herrnstein in The Bell Curve were guilty of not simply using scientific
research for reactionary  purposes but of putting out shoddy science.  Reviews in scientific journals pointed out numerous errors in that book's
use of statistical analysis : confusions of correlations with causality,
confusions concerning the statistical meaning of hereditibility and much
more. You are right that people like Herrnstein or Darlimgton
or much bourgeois social science are dangerous because they promote
falsehoods in the name of reason and science.  However, this is no
reason to reject reason or science
but to reject shoddy science and the distortions of science by ideology.

>I can see you point in some ways, but it does sound like you're 
>putting
>epistemology first, above politics, above truth? 
>
I think that I am perhaps putting epistemology and truth above politics. 
Otherwise one gets such absurdities as Lysenkoism. 
>For example, Dawkins has been promoting an ontogenetically 
>implausible, even
>absurd, model of the evolution of the eye - in part to promote 
>selectionism,
>in part to counteract creationists who make arguments from design, in 
>which 
>the superbly adapted eye is a key example. On one hand, he is fighting
>religious irrationality. On the other hand, he is deceptive. If one 
>had the 
>opportunity (and the ability) would one expose Dawkins' deceptiveness 
>but 
>therefore aid and comfort the creationists?
>
I suppose you are referring to Dawkins' newest book which I have yet not read.  You charge him with being deceptive in his account of the
evolution of the eye but is he
deliberately distorting the facts or is he indulging in the kinds of
oversimplifications that even the best science popularizers  engage in
for the sake of communicating
complex ideas to non-specialists?

One more point:  If we accept post-modernism as true does this not imply
that Marxism is just one more ideology alongside other ideologies?  Does
this not undercut any basis for a scientific critique of capitalism?

                                               Jim



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