Date: Thu, 11 Apr 1996 14:18:03 -0600
Subject:  Re: Chicken or Egg -Reply -Reply



>>> Matt D. <afn02065-AT-afn.org>  4/11/96, 01:19pm >>>
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:  If quant ---> qual is enough to satisfy you, then we won't
have much more to talk about on this thread.  This general assertion
and various examples have been tried on me before, but what I might
find more convincing is a view of how exactly that works inside of a
society, just a small foraging one to begin with.

I believe that some methods of understanding some things are
applicable to all lifeforms, because they all have certain things in
common.  This is not to deny historical factors.  This is to try to
make some sense of the ways that people both create and respond to
all kinds of factors.  Don't you think that living things have or
pursue any self-interest?  Competition, and sociality [as I
understand it], is not limited to capitalist societies, or human
societies.

And am I not dealing with material reality?  'Culture uber alles'
sounds like putting the superstructure in control.

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

Lisa: 'Sociality' just IS ?  Maybe that's enough for you, but I want
to get inside it, rather than take it as a 'given'.  If you can't get
around your Crusoe/ bourgeois/ fantastical isolation, you won't be
able to understand what I'm saying, because that is _not_ it.  I'm
applying a proper biological EE approach to human behavior, and it's
not easy.  If you're not interested in the origin and evolution of
_Homo sapiens_, or you don't think it's at all relevant to anything
people do today, then we can just disagree.  



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