the various shades of gray in sociobiology, and causal modeling

>
>Richard Hutchinson wrote the following:
>
>Not everyone on this list follows lockstep an anti-sociobiological
>orthodoxy.  That human behavior is caused partly by biological factors and
>partly by sociological factors is the sensible starting point.  It leaves
>open all the particulars for empirical research to determine.  To reject
>biological causation in toto is to remain willfully ignorant


        While certainly humans are biological and sociological, the
narratives around these attempt to posit different causal structures, when,
of course    causation is terribly difficult to 'prove.' An easier
theoretical modeling is interaction between biology and sociological
factors, and I would say, in a complex world without 'natural experiments'
that hold societies that are 'totally biological' verses others that are
'totally sociological' this issue of singular causal effects models becomes
a metaphysical argument, that as Alan wrote, can be assumed to have ideology
instead of a theoretical/empirical bent to it.
        
        Certainly, there are interactions, granted. That's about all we can
say.  Studies on the sociological distribution of (biological) serotonin and
testosterone should give anyone pause towards arguing in any overarching
sense for 'one OR the other.' Is the empirical phenomenon separate? What are
separate are only different ideological casts to the issue, likely due to
the Babel of the university setting.

        On a personal note, the above types of studies seem to indicate that
there is an insidious biological reification of SOCIOLOGICAL
positionalities, instead of the other way around. 

        Besides we are overly simplifying an issue: what people define
sociobiology as being can widely vary: though we have been discussing
sociobiology as biological determinism,  I have seen at least six separate
definitions of  'sociobiology:' 

        1) biological determinism: biology causes social structures and/or
individual behavior and social outcomes, operationalized from readings of
ethology (animal socialization) [which of course I assume people comprehend
is based on further assumptions about animal populations as being 'contrary'
to human populations in their socialization skills. Thus, how does that
stand up when various ape groups do show forms of social learning, etc. So
what is the justification there?] Other 'readings' attempt to show and
define by showing; in the 1800s, on the social level, from imperialist
driven racism frames; on the individual/social level:  phrenological
studies, bottling brains or Europeans carving up indigenous people for
medical study, looking for 'differences'; skulls of famous people, etc.;
biology (thorugh phrenology and racism) becomes a surrogate social religion
called into justifying status hierarchies throughout the 1800s, with the
decline of legitmation of monarchical states and widening social contacts of
peoples; Comte's attitude toward the social world as operating like a
biological model; Social Darwinism.

        2) biological reflexivity:  A milder form of biological determinism,
e.g, Wilson (regardless of the one sided hoopla around him)and others'
claims for genetic AND environmental influences on human social behavior.
This begs the question of why separate them as phenomena, meaning, what are
genes? Active modelers or passive recorders of environmental phenomena? Or 
both?

        3) biologically undeterministic 'sociobiology:' sometimes called
biosociology (though people differentiate between different uses of the term
biosociology: some equate sociobiology and biosociology as the same, and
some prefer to use the term 'sociobiology' for biosociology defined herein,
exclusively); the study of ONLY and explicitly the biological reifications
of social structures (testosterone/serotonin in 'felt' status hierarchies,
female menstruation, nutrition and psychoanalytic states studies  etc.) I
CAUTION that different people use the words sociobiology and biosociology in
different senses than here. The use of 'biosociology' in this text is only
my recommendation to call the specific category of biological reification of
social phenomena 'biosociology.' "Biology on social foundations."

        4)  human evolutionism: human sociology as a social extension of the
once exclusively biological Darwinistic process of 'selection', survival of
the fittest 'activities.' From one side, can be interpreted as 'might is
right' arguments, though less on the individual sense of Social Darwinism
and more on the level of behaviors, beliefs, etc. Weber's ideal types of
religion; religious studies of Frazer 'documenting progression' from animism
to monotheism, typically using other presently contemporaneous peoples
framed as examples of 'human past'; early anthropology has this cast; from
excerpts of Norbert Elias's last work (The Symbol Theory, 1990) I assume
that he held this view of human society moving to a different level of
structure in an evolutionary process, into symbols and meanings from a once
'pure' biology.  On the human symbolic side, there is much writing done on
these suppositions in a rhetorical and interpretive way--organizing the
expansion of the use of language and social interactions as an evolutionary
process akin to biological evolutionary processes. It seems to be built on
mostly analogy instead of empirical data, in my view.  On the biological
side, Fox (1970s anthropologist) makes the arguments for sociology as a
conditioned outcome of special biological qualities of humans. Others have
written about the importance of the curious phenomenon of puberty as a
biological basis (actually I feel it is the other way around, sociological
expansion biologically pressuring the 'slack' of puberty into the social
world, social maintenance in the face of the individual life cycle of birth
and death, etc.); 
        Though it is slightly different and poses the inverse causal model,
I would place theories of  genes 'using' social structures to breed
selfishly (The Selfish Gene) in this category as well, though it should
likely go in its own category as an 'inverted human evolutionism, as
sociological elaboration is interpreted as 'pressured' by 'genetic desires'
for expansion.

        5) interrelational biosociology: wider set of empirical phenomena
than #3, and carries #2 into the realm of genetics, environment AND
structural interaction between different organs: typically interdisciplinary
study of posing a biologically conditioned social world; example,
'paleopsychology' (study of the historical expansion of psychic processes
with changes in brain structure; biochemistry, studies in human evolution,
circadian and other bodily rhythms 'enforcing' particular sleep cycles,
etc--although I have seen recent research to the contrary); a more tactile
and structural 'tone' than #2's abstract genetic prescriptions for behavior,
though it has a causal theory interest similar to the causal one in
biological determinism.

        6) sociological  'determinism:' biology/sociology a false dichotomy,
an historical study of widening sense of sociological influences on
biological reification of human behavior (with of course individual
biological 'effects'); includes biosociology and human evolutionism as
defined above, incorporates theorization in terms of feedback mechanisms
between individual biology and group sociology for individual and group
outcomes, instead of employing causal models.     (me)   ;-)

        There are of course different groups vying for where different
phenomena 'goes' (like schizophrenia and manic-depressiveness). 
        As an observation about social science information in general: by
posing a sense of objective structures to social phenomena, social science
will likely always be a contentious (and politically hegemonic) process of
knowledge formation. I'm for the widest and most inclusive hegemony we can
stand. ;-)
        I suppose it could be eventually 'shown' through particularly snazzy
methodologies that there are biological causal effects for certain social
phenomena. However, always expect to be contradicted.  ;-)


        I feel that Alan's point about epochs of rapid change being related
to social longing for simple (and stable) answers to rationalize/justify the
social world out of human hands is very accurate. 


Regards,


Mark Whitaker
University of Wisconsin-Madison