List,
Put aside the fact of all the open racialists who make up the hard core of
sociobiology for a moment, and let's consider those sociobiologists who
have been alleged to have progressive political backgrounds. What does
that tell us? The intent here is to use the good intentions fallacy to
counter the undesirable political-ideological institutional basis of
sociobiology. But a person can stand before me telling me that s/he is a
social democrat all the while advancing a deeply reactionary ideological
position. There's no contradiction. (And since when has social democracy
become automatically defined as real progressivism?) What is far more
important than the personal political views of individual sociobiologists,
and I already raised this issue, is the actual political-ideological
character of sociobiology. This notion of a communist conspiracy behind
sociobiology because some of its proponents are "left-of-center liberals"
and "social democrats," besides the sheer level of absurdity of its
content, suffers from the error of confusing personal political
allegiances with an ideological structure.
Keeping in mind that ideological structures themselves have consequences
relatively independent of any impoverished self-criticism of their
advocates, we should know that it makes no more sense to say that
sociobiology is not reactionary because some of its advocates are social
democrats than it is sensible to say that anti-affirmative action is not
racist because some of its advocates deny their hatred for blacks.
The propaganda technique being deployed is the lesser known method of ad
hominem that involves appealing to the desirable characteristics of the
proponents of a particular position. The argument goes like this: "Noam
Chomsky is a left-wing progressive; he believes in sociobiology; therefore
sociobiology cannot be a reactionary right-wing ideology."
First, I emphasize the distinction between this fallacious form of
argument from the argument I have advanced that associates sociobiology,
*as a political-ideological program*, with right-wing reactionary
elements. My critique involves locating sociobiology in the institutional
structures that fund it foster its development, and to do it is, in part,
important to identify its proponents within those structures. (Nobody can
credibly advance an argument that sociobiology is a left-wing political
program.) Because sociobiology presents facts in the court of scientific
discourse, its funding sources and political-ideological impetus is
entirely relevant to the judgment of sociobiology as an intellectual
endeavor. It is, personal political allegiances of the individual
proponents to one side, a scientistic cover over a larger and long-time
historical political program.
Second, the understanding and controversy of Chomsky's position on this
matter is more subtle than the sloganeering of the post I respond to
permits. This is what happens when a speaker seeks to make a
point-to-point reduction of somebody's political description and a larger
political-ideological program. Chomsky's theory of the language
acquisition device, as I have discussed previously on this listserv, is
logically problematic, but in any case is the only compelling example of
an intrinsic human nature. Chomsky's argument is not empirical, but rather
structural, talking a realist position on linguistic capacity. However, it
must be said that Chomsky extends his rationalism into many areas of human
social life without any evidence whatsoever, and does so in my view
irresponsibly. He has suggested that this genetic unfolding of innate
rationality bears not only only aspects of intelligence, but also bears on
moral and even aesthetic judgments. My take on Chomsky in this regard is
that he developed the innate rationality of humans, along with their
inherent creativity and need for free and creative work, and so on, and
hooked this up with his value system as a matter of political expediency.
His hostility to historical materialism leaves Chomsky with no scientific
theory of human interaction, and so the rough leap of faith he had to make
to accomplish his political program is expected. Chomsky should be
criticized for this; this is probably the single biggest error Chomsky has
ever made in his social philosophizing. We should keep in mind Chomsky's
shifting position on this. He started off his career saying he could find
only "tenuous points of contact" between his political position
(anarchism) and the science he was developing. By the 1970s and 1980s he
was advancing a limited form of sociobiology, a sort of Cartesian
rationalist position. Yet, as the political agenda of the New Right has
emerged more clearly, Chomsky has reacted strongly to the sociobiological
program, condemning, for example, Murray's work, which is representative
of the body of sociobiological literature. I am not at all sure that
Chomsky today could be characterized as a sociobiology.
Andy