File spoon-archives/marxism-international.archive/marxism-international_1996/96-11-06.190, message 64


From: Paul Gallagher <pcg-AT-panix.com>
Subject: Re: M-I: Re: Should we let up on the pomos?
Date: Tue, 5 Nov 1996 10:24:21 -0500 (EST)


> 
>  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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> 



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