Date: Fri, 31 Jan 1997 20:15:37 PST Subject: Re: M-I: Reinstating the Beast in Man (Was: Are Apes Naughty From: farmelantj-AT-juno.com (James Farmelant) : Louis R Godena <louisgodena-AT-ids.net> at : Fri, 31 Jan 1997 14:28:56 -0500 (EST) wrote: It is nice to see you return to the kind of topic that would have interested Lisa Rogers. Evolutionary psychology as Robert Wright pointed out in his popular book on that subject- The Moral Animal- is to a large extant a repackaging of sociobiology. Back in the 1970's sociobiology took quite a beating on the grounds that it was simply an updated version of social Darwinism which like the earlier versions would provide a "scientific" rationale for hierarchies of race, class, and gender. Nor was this fear misplaced since its most prominent public champion, entomologist E.O. Wilson is a man with neo-conservative political views. Furthermore, in France "new right" intellectuals took up sociobiology precisely because they believed it could be used to justify racist, anti-Semitism and so forth. Nevertheless, the basic notion underlying sociobiology and evolutionary psychology: that human behavior can be understood in Darwinian terms is not necessarily incompatible with a progressive political outlook. Lisa, herself attempted to synthesize sociobiology with Marxism as exemplified in her studies of foraging as a mode of production. Marxists going back to Engels and Kautsky have long been concerned with integrating Marxism with Darwinism. This a topic worthy of further exploration. James F. > >Is politics truly about ordering society or liberating mankind? >Poetry >about the human condition? Music and painting about >self-expression? >Literature about wit, irony, and sharpness? > >Think again. > >Deep down, according to the new discipline of evolutionary >psychology, >they are all mating displays. > >The practitioners of EP believe they are in the vanguard of a >revolution >that will change the way we think about -- and govern -- ourselves. >Critics grumble that EP is just another name for some old -- and some >not >very creditable -- Darwinist social theories. > >Briefly, EP argues that ideology owes a lot to the behavior of our >tribal >ancestors who roamed the savannah, that student protests are a kind >of >dating service, that creative genius emerged as a way of obtaining >sex, >that technology is merely a side-effect of adaptations originally >designed >for courtship. > >Such views are anathema to many people across a wide gamut of >political >thought. Feminists hate it, leftists fear it, and church leaders >see it >as man's final plunge into moral relativism. Yet, EP, which grew >paradoxically out of the dialectical anthropology movement of the >1970s -- >and which embraced, at least briefly, leftist social scientists such >as >Eugene Genovese and Clifford Geertz -- could be useful in explaining >the >historical origins of our emotions, dreams and desires. > >According to evolutionary psychologists such as Geoffrey Miller >(University >of London) and Adam Phillips (Harvard), two forces were at work in >all >animal behavior: sexual selection (which produced, for example, the >peacock's tail) and selection for survival (fear of predators). One >is >often in conflict with the other: males will take risks in order to >eat more >in order to get big to fight other males and mate more frequently. >What >EP tries to do with human behavior is to ask if courtship functions >can be >identified in a lot of behavior traditionally thought to be either for >survival or to have no function at all (Miller, *Evolutionary >Adaptions in >Human Society* [London, Macmillan, forthcoming], Phillips, *On >Kissing, >Tickling, and Being Bored* [Cambridge, Mass., 1996: Harvard >University >Press). > >EP's aim is to show the historical substrate or framework from which >everyday decisions derive. "No part of your mind has to know what >you're up >to, any more than your heart has to know that it's a pump," says >Miller, >"It's just that the mechanism is there, the motivation and the >capacity." >Thus, the Enlightenment *philosophes* nor Beethoven nor Karl Marx >necessarily knew that they were merely showing off for women. They, >too, >were the product "of hundreds of thousands of generations of ancestors >who >survived to reproduce. Even if [they] didn't make it, all the >mental >equipment was there". Miller goes on, rhetorically: "If the most >beautiful sounds and sights in nature like the peacock's tail, the >bower >bird's bower, the song of the hump-backed whale, are all due to sex >selection...It shouldn't be any surprise that the most sublime and >wonderful >products of human nature are as well." > >If EP is so good at identifying motivational factors for human >behavior, >doesn't it tend to erode the notion of criminal culpability? And >isn't >there a fundamental conflict between contemporary psychology and the >legal >system, whose notions of guilt and human nature come from the Middle >Ages? >And wouldn't Marx, especially, rail against the reductionism that >employs >zoology to explain human beings? > >On the other hand, as in the case of Canadian statistical research >which >shows that children are much more likely to be battered and killed by >stepfathers than by real fathers, EP could provide a paradigmatic >basis for >identifying vulnerabilities, dangers and biases in human nature. >Similarly, it can help explain purely "cultural" phenomenon. >Young men >are vastly overrepresented as producers of culture; we are awash with >their >art, music and political ideologies. Not necessarily for courtship >or >display, perhaps, but surely a by-product of youth's capacity to >engage >thus. "We should never be insulted that part of human nature was >shaped >by sexual selection," claims Miller; "All we're saying is that it was >crafted not by blimb, dumb Nature but by the most intelligent >selectors >that every existed before humans -- our ancestors." After all, he >continues, "even an abstract capacity like moral integrity could have >been >sexually selected." > >And Marx himself would have pointed out that even chimps experience >moral >conflict and punish friends who betray and cheat. > >Louis Godena > > > > --- from list marxism-international-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu >--- > --- from list marxism-international-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
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