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 > > > > --- from list marxism-international-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu --- > --- from list marxism-international-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
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