Date: Thu, 11 Apr 1996 15:19:11 -0400
Subject: Re: Chicken or Egg -Reply


>Lisa:  You either misunderstand me or misrepresent me.

Well, I guess those are a couple of possibilities.  Another is that
you're just not making much sense.

>I'd appreciate a definition of "collective".  Aren't other species
>totally dependent upon lengthy parenting and social learning in order
>to live?  Do gorillas ever live alone?

I'm tempted to say "quantitative -> qualitative" and leave it at
that, but I'm not sure what point you're trying to make here:
"IF other animals live in groups, THEN we must approach the
development of human society from the standpoint of an
'ecological' methodological individualism that denies the
determinative primacy of cultural - read social - read historical
factors"?!  Huh?

>Lisa:  And 'sociality' is predicated on ... what?  

For humans, sociality does not have to be "explained".  Rather it
is the counter-claim that requires justification.  You seem to be
taking evolutionary ecology down the road of the Robinsonades
of the 19th century -- projecting the commonplaces of bourgeois
political economy into "Nature" here reimagined as the completely
fantastical isolated individual.  Human sociality certainly should be
_described_ as accurately as possible, but the idea of "explaining"
it is nonsensical.  There is not, never has been, and never will be
a non-social homo sapiens.

-- Matt D.

P.S.  Think'll I'll crosspost this to m1...  Whoops!  Just kidding!
Don't want to be expelled so early in the "school year"! :-)



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