Re: Human Nature: Born or Made? (fwd)

At the risk of offending yet others, &/or of providing further
evidence of my neo-fascist tendencies:

At 7:50 AM +0800 17/3/00, wwagar@binghamton.edu wrote:

[deleted]
>I prefer the following value-neutral definition of an ideology, from
>my Merriam-Webster Unabridged: "the integrated assertions, theories,
>and aims that constitute a sociopolitical program." Therefore, for
>my money, an "ideologue" is someone who professes an ideology.
>Forget the pejorative connotations. Since I believe that we all
>profess or should profess one or another ideology, I think we should
>all be ideologues. I would also prefer that everyone shared my
>ideology, cosmopolitical democratic Marxism, but the minute, nay the
>very second, that we proclaim our ideology scientifically correct
>and grounded in the very nature of things, we open the door to
>intellectual tyranny and foreclose freedom of inquiry.

Sure we are all ideologues as per Merriam-Webster Unabridged.

But left at that, aren't we conceding too much?

The sociopolitical programme comprises "integrated assertions,
theories...", but do you really wish to say that no claims of
scientific correctness can be made for those "assertions",
"theories", as contrasted to their integration into a sociopolitical
programme?

And if "assertions" and "theories" are subject to claims of
scientific correctness, and if scientific correctness means something
like approximating to the (provisional) truth as can be determined
both by reasoning and the empirical evidence at hand, postmodernism
notwithstanding, then isn't it also possible to claim some greater
validity for some ideologies as opposed to others? While there is
evidently no one-to-one fit between specific assertions and theories
and specific sociopolitical programmes, hence no unique means of
eliminating sociopolitical programmes, it would appear possible to
rule out some programmes on the basis of the defective reasoning,
assertions and theories upon which they are based. Isn't it precisely
the case that academic activity -- and the majority of members of
this list are based in some academic institution or other -- is
directed towards some such ends: to demonstrate that the assertions
and theories of others are defective in some way and unworthy of
further consideration, at least until such time as contrary evidence
emerges? Ipso facto, that programmes based upon such defective
assertions and theories are consequently faulty, even if their aims
be noble, although their elimination would be facilitated if their
aims could also be shown to be ignoble, as in, say, eugenics?

If it is thus possible to make some such claim of greater validity,
then why should such a claim open the door to intellectual tyranny
and foreclose freedom of inquiry? It would only mean that all claims
to freedom of inquiry must be based on some claim of validity, i.e.
not anything goes. Sure, a person would still be free to believe in
patent nonsense (can't prevent that without eliminating the person),
but wouldn't we be excused if such a person's output were
marginalised, as may well be the case with this particular output?
However, if such a person were able to transform what appears to be
patent nonsense into something founded on commonly accepted standards
of validation, I trust we would take our metaphorical hats off to
such a person and change our beliefs accordingly, or risk being
considered foolish.

I suggest, with some reservations, that the one arrogance which is
not permitted is that which would deny without further consideration
the _empirical_ experiences/findings of whole communities and
peoples, as opposed to the ways in which they may theorise those
experiences/findings, as patent nonsense: an e.g. would be the use of
leeches and maggots in previous medical practice, which has now been
shown to actually have a basis, in the terms of current science, or
the use of acupuncture, etc. My reservations -- one does have to be
careful else one finds oneself accepting widow-burning and the
horrendous forms of female circumcision under some fraudulent
post-coloniality.

If this much can be granted, then if nonsense starts finding its way
into prestigious cutting-edge journals, it would seem self-evident
that a healthy antenna should start sending out warning signals of a
'bad-faith' ideological programme at work.

The instance at hand, rape and evolutionary benefit, would appear to
be one such instance. I have no access to the Nature article --
despite all talk of space-time compression, the south is still quite
a space-time from the North Atlantic -- but one can speculate that it
likely would have to make an appeal to some such point as "rape is an
effective means of genetic transmission". Well, perhaps they studied
gibbons or chimps, but it is quite clear that in the case of humans
(a) the female is only fertile for a short period during the
menstrual cycle, (b) the female provides no overt indication that she
is in such a fertile period (although some (many?) females do know
privately when they are ovulating), suggesting that the chances of
gene transmission are greatest with a cooperating female, (c) that
rape is actually an ineffective method of impregnation, often
resulting in failure, indicated by the fact that rapists are a small
minority suggesting that the "rape gene" (if some such should exist)
has been most ineffectively transmitted; they are losers.

More, the term "rape" is completely and specifically human (as are
the terms "selfish" and "altruistic"): there is no such thing as
"rape" amongst non-human animals -- and therein lies so much of the
problem of sociobiology: the anthropomorphic (is that the right
term?) conceit, concealing a socio-political programme of
rehabilitation of behaviours which, in most cultures, have been
deemed unacceptable, at least inappropriate as a generalised mode.
Thus, different cultures may define "rape" differently, but all have
a notion of "rape", i.e. forcible sexual intercourse, which can range
from touching a breast to full penetration, with a female against her
wishes, at the very least, against the wishes of those who claim
power-authority over her; different cultures may define "selfishness"
differently, but all have a notion that it is at least inappropriate
as a generalised mode of behaviour, as ditto with "altruism". But
when someone comes along with the argument that "rape",
"selfishness", etc. has evolutionary benefit, or can be explained by
evolutionary psychology, it in effect seeks to rehabilitate "rape",
"selfishness", etc., especially when it would also seek to
re-describe that which is normally taken as "altruistic" as
"selfish", and so on. Some such move is perhaps taken to its extreme
when a gene is described as "selfish" -- such a description is, to
use a recently fashionable term, a trope.

None of this should be taken as ruling out of consideration the
possibility of evolutionary determinants, at least bounds, upon human
behaviour. It would be foolish to do so. But shouldn't we remember,
always, that evolution also brought about the specifically human
capacity for sociality and culture, that culture and sociality are
not to be counterposed as the opposite of biology? As such, it would
be equally foolish to concede to evolution the determinants of
behaviour that not only exhibits such a wide range contemporaneously,
but also has undergone such massive transformation in the relatively
short (as compared to evolutionary time) time that homo sapiens
sapiens have appeared on the scene.

Indeed, it is plausible to argue that given the relatively long
period in the short lifespan of homo sapiens sapiens in which life
was indeed brutish and short, evolutionary selection would likely
have eliminated a large proportion of dysfunctional behaviour, in
evolutionary terms, and that the evolutionary conceit should
precisely be taken to indicate that those behaviours which virtually
all existing human societies deem to be unacceptable, at least
inappropriate, were evolutionarily selected against (recall that the
capacity for culture is indeed a biological given). For if genetics
determines behaviour, then the fact that such unacceptable behaviour
is upheld or justified by a small minority would suggest that those
thinking and behaving in such a manner (or those genes allegedly with
such characteristics) were singularly unsuccessful in evolutionary
terms. Now one wonders why inequality has to be sustained with such
intellectual and physical contortions, whereas equality is
acknowledged by a majority to be a desideratum, albeit unrealistic
and idealistic, and that the urge for equality should re-assert
itself again and again, despite all the contortions that seek to
suppress it :)

But that said, it is of course the case that some ideological
programme is always at work that would seek to marginalise some other
programmes that are based upon assertions and theories that can be
shown to have some validity as commonly accepted.

That the broad sociopolitical programme(s) around which the majority
of this list is gathered currently gets the short end of the stick
is, however, no reason to slide into vapid relativism.

Indeed, even aims, at least some of them, can be subjected to
rational discourse and, to some extent, empirical elimination.
Minimally, one should have to justify one's morality, and it might be
a far better, if more cacophonous, world if we were all pushed to do
so rigorously.

This may all sound old-fashioned, even foolish (I'll grant that maybe
it is indeed foolish) by the fashion of today. But sometimes,
old-fashioned can be right, and there is rhyme to the foolishness :)

Khoo Khay Jin

"The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the
abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide
enough for those who have little."

--Franklin D. Roosevelt 1937