Childhood Diseases May Be Rooted in Evolution

[The Vegan Marxist]

Childhood Diseases May Be Rooted in Evolution
By Janelle Weaver
01 February 2011

Long childhood is part of what makes humans unique, but this extended developmental stage comes with a cost: a risk of cancer and other genetic diseases.

That much scientists have known. Now an evolutionary biologist has found a case in the scientific literature for explaining these childhood disorders through evolutionary theory, using an approach called Darwinian medicine. The findings of the review, which are detailed today (Feb. 1) in the journal the Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, may reveal the causes of certain illnesses in children.

The field of Darwinian medicine began in the early 1990s, but "no one had yet applied the principles of this field to children," said Bernard Crespi, the review author, who is an evolutionary biologist at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, Canada.

By noting how human development differs from that of other primates, one could begin to understand how the distinctive human traits — and their associated health problems — evolved, according to the reviewer. For instance, humans don't become adults until the age of 18. "By primate standards, that's just ridiculous," Crespi said.

Selfish genes

The timing of developmental stages results from a tug of war between imprinted genes, which are genes whose expression is controlled by either the mother or the father, depending on which one contributed them. Each parent passes on one form of a gene to the offspring, but imprinted genes are expressed — that is, turned on — in only one of these copies.

These genes can influence mother-child interactions in a way that advances one parent over the other. Imprinted genes that are paternally expressed would intensify the demands on the mother, while maternally expressed genes would lessen the mother's burden.

Imagine, as an extreme example, a household with one mother and four children from different fathers. From a father's perspective, his child should extract as much as possible from the mother to promote the child's own growth and chance of survival at the expense of the three other children.

Although the mother benefits from caring for her offspring, she must save resources for her own survival and future reproduction. So maternally expressed genes should reduce the child's dependence and hasten maturation, leading to early weaning and self-feeding.

Maybe that's good for Mom, but for the child, precocious development could lead to medical conditions such as metabolic syndrome, which increases the risk for stroke, diabetes and heart disease; and polycystic ovary disease, in which women develop cysts that hinder their ability to get pregnant.

Uncontrolled growth

The impairment of imprinted genes can disrupt developmental processes and undermine health, Crespi told LiveScience.

As master regulators of cell division and growth, imprinted genes exert a disproportionate impact on health. These genes undergo relatively frequent changes in expression (caused by the attachment of a methyl group to the DNA compound), and, without a working backup copy of the gene to provide different instructions, these changes can precipitate dramatic outcomes.

Damage to these genes is thought to be the underlying factor in disorders such as Silver-Russell syndrome, which causes slow body growth, and Beckwith-Wiedemann syndrome, which leads to large body size and organs. Excessive growth, in turn, is associated with the uncontrolled cell production of cancer. And cancer is the second most common cause of childhood mortality (after accidents) in developed countries, with an incidence of about 1 in 600 in those younger than 15.

Imprinted genes may be the culprit, Crespi said.

To learn more about the origins of childhood illnesses, Crespi encourages further research on the evolutionary basis of child health. "Development is a sequential and cascading process," he said. "What happens even when you're a fetus or a child has huge effects on your health when you're an adult."

http://www.livescience.com/health/childhood-diseases-rooted-in-evolution-110201.html

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

This looks like ideology, not science:


Selfish Genes

The timing of developmental stages results from a tug of war between imprinted genes, which are genes whose expression is controlled by either the mother or the father, depending on which one contributed them. Each parent passes on one form of a gene to the offspring, but imprinted genes are expressed — that is, turned on — in only one of these copies.

These genes can influence mother-child interactions in a way that advances one parent over the other. Imprinted genes that are paternally expressed would intensify the demands on the mother, while maternally expressed genes would lessen the mother's burden.

Imagine, as an extreme example, a household with one mother and four children from different fathers. From a father's perspective, his child should extract as much as possible from the mother to promote the child's own growth and chance of survival at the expense of the three other children.

Although the mother benefits from caring for her offspring, she must save resources for her own survival and future reproduction. So maternally expressed genes should reduce the child's dependence and hasten maturation, leading to early weaning and self-feeding.

Maybe that's good for Mom, but for the child, precocious development could lead to medical conditions such as metabolic syndrome, which increases the risk for stroke, diabetes and heart disease; and polycystic ovary disease, in which women develop cysts that hinder their ability to get pregnant.

Genes can no more be 'selfish' than they can be magnanimous or greedy.

[The Vegan Marxist]

This looks like ideology, not science:



Genes can no more be 'selfish' than they can be magnanimous or greedy.

Everything's ideology and not science to you Rosa. That's practically your entire themed dialog on RevLeft.

Having said that, have you not read Richard Dawkins' work, "The Selfish Gene"? If not, then I recommend you doing so.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

TVM:


Everything's ideology and not science to you Rosa. That's practically your entire themed dialog on RevLeft.

Can you substantiate that slur from the 15000+ posts I have posted here? If not, withdraw it.

Pehaps you haven't read this comment of Marx's, either:


"The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force.The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the means of mental production, so that thereby, generally speaking, the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are subject to it. The ruling ideas are nothing more than the ideal expression of the dominant material relationships, the dominant material relationships grasped as ideas; hence of the relationships which make the one class the ruling one, therefore, the ideas of its dominance. The individuals composing the ruling class possess among other things consciousness, and therefore think. Insofar, therefore, as they rule as a class and determine the extent and compass of an epoch, it is self-evident that they do this in its whole range, hence among other things rule also as thinkers, as producers of ideas, and regulate the production and distribution of the ideas of their age: thus their ideas are the ruling ideas of the epoch." [Marx and Engels (1970), pp.64-65, The German Ideology. Bold added.]

You:


Having said that, have you not read Richard Dawkins' work, "The Selfish Gene"? If not, then I recommend you doing so.

In fact, I have read it far too many times than is good for me.

We debated that execrable book here a few months ago:

http://www.revleft.com/vb/why-left-hostile-t132454/index.html

And here's a recent atticle from the New Scientist on this:


The selfish metaphor: Conceits of evolution

Mary Midgley

Many people dismiss metaphors and imagery as surface polish. But just look at the way they have hijacked our thinking on evolution

SELFISH genes, survival of the fittest, competition, hawk and dove strategies. Like all theories, Darwinism has its own distinct vocabulary. So distinct, in fact, that we end up asking how else we can talk about evolution? After all, isn't competitive evolution the only possible context for explaining the biological facts? The drama implied by competition, war and selfishness passes unnoticed because people are used to this rather hyped-up way of talking even about current scientific beliefs.

The trouble with metaphors is that they don't just mirror scientific beliefs, they also shape them. Our imagery is never just surface paint, it expresses, advertises and strengthens our preferred interpretations. It also usually carries unconscious bias from the age we live in - and this can be tricky to ditch no matter how faulty, unless we ask ourselves how and why things go wrong, and start to talk publicly about how we should understand metaphor.

Evolution has been the most glaring example of the thoughtless use of metaphor over the past 30 years, with the selfish/war metaphors dominating and defining the landscape so completely it becomes hard to admit there are other ways of conceiving it. In How The Leopard Changed Its Spots, biologist and complexity theorist Brian Goodwin suggested the kind of correction needed, remarking mildly that humans are "every bit as co-operative as we are competitive; as altruistic as we are selfish... These are not romantic yearnings and Utopian ideals, they arise from a rethinking of our nature that is emerging from the sciences of complexity". But that was in 1991 - and few were listening.

From the merest glance at a wider context, it becomes clear that competition cannot be the ultimate human reality, still less (as philosopher Daniel Dennett argued) the central creative force behind the universe. Entities complex enough to compete cannot exist at all without much internal cooperation. To create cells, organelles must combine; to create armies, soldiers must organise. Even the evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins pointed out on the 30th anniversary of publication of his iconic book, The Selfish Gene, that genes are actually cooperative rather than egoistic.

So why has this imagery become so prevalent? Because it expresses deep conflicts originating in 17th-century England which are still unresolved in the western world. The central clash is between communal and separatist views of human nature. It rose out of the English civil war, which shifted the world picture from a feudal, communal pattern towards the more individualistic, pluralistic model we officially follow today. Ideals of personal allegiance, heroic warfare and the divine right of kings began to yield to civilian visions based on democracy, technology and commerce.

That individualistic, post civil-war world view has always been seen as scientific. This was largely because Newtonian physics viewed matter atomistically, as composed of hard, billiard-ball-like particles bouncing off each other in complex patterns - patterns which, under God, shaped that huge clock, the classical universe. Billiards, fashionable at the time, may have helped shape this view, while the vision of a vast, regular, unchanging cosmic machine was certainly reassuring.

The reality, however, was that society was changing unpredictably and would need other, very different kinds of metaphors and images, ones better able to reveal shifts and clashes of interest. To fill this need, philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau devised a kind of social atomism, along with the colourful individualistic metaphors it inspired and still inspires. Through this lens, people no longer appeared as parts of a machine: they were still atoms, but distinct, active, independent units.

But the philosopher Thomas Hobbes's claim that the natural state of humans was "a war of all against all" (put forward in a bid to stop people supporting misguided governments) accidentally launched a wider revolt against the notion of citizenship. The slogan made it possible to argue later that there is no such thing as society, that we owe one another nothing. This thought also inspired campaigns for admirable things like easier divorce and universal suffrage and it is still strong today, even though physicists themselves no longer see their particles as radically disconnected.

In the 18th century, economists eagerly applied individualism to commerce, arguing that free competition always serves the general good. Its champions could thus believe they were being scientific while still acting as good citizens. And its emphasis on conflict reassured them they were still heroes, that bourgeois life had not corrupted their machismo. So atomistic thinking, originally drawn from physics, acquired a social meaning in economics and was then returned to science as ideas of competition began to dominate 19th-century biology. The resulting jumble of atomistic ontology, laissez-faire economics and warlike noises came together fully in the theories of 19th-century "social Darwinists" like Herbert Spencer.

Charles Darwin actually hated much of it, flatly rejecting the crude, direct application of natural selection to social policies. In The Descent Of Man he insisted that humans are a deeply social species whose values cannot be derived from selfish calculation. Yet, as a man of his age, he still shared Spencer's obsessive belief in the creative force of competition. He ruled that natural selection was indeed the main cause of evolutionary changes, And - apart from sexual selection - he could not suggest any other possible source.

He was sure, however, that natural selection could not be their sole cause. He must be right: natural selection is only a filter and filters cannot be the sole cause of the coffee that comes from them. "Evolutionary coffee" - genuine new developments - could not emerge unless the range of selectables has somehow been shaped to make it possible. If that range were indefinite only randomness could follow, however much time elapsed.

Biologist D'Arcy Thompson pointed this out in On Growth And Form in 1917, noting the striking natural tendencies which contribute to evolution - the subtle, natural patterns such as Fibonacci spirals that shape all manner of organic forms, and the logic underlying patterns such as the arrangement of a creature's limbs. Thompson's work was little noted in the 20th-century's concentration on natural selection, but more recently biologists such as Brian Goodwin, Steven Rose and Simon Conway Morris have developed his work, showing how natural selection is supplemented by a kind of self-organisation within each species, which has its own logic.

Now the old metaphors of evolution need to give way to new ones founded on integrative thinking - reasoning based on systems thinking. This way, the work of evolution can be seen as intelligible and constructive, not as a gamble driven randomly by the forces of competition. And if non-competitive imagery is needed, systems biologist Denis Noble has a good go at it in The Music Of Life, where he points out how natural development, not being a car, needs no single "driver" to direct it. Symphonies, he remarks, are not caused only by a single dominant instrument nor, indeed, solely by their composer. And developing organisms do not even need a composer: they grow, as wholes, out of vast and ancient systems which are themselves parts of nature.

Recognising the cultural origins of evolution's metaphors and that we are slowly, painfully, creating new ones takes the drama out of things, but it does mean we will learn how to think about metaphors and their philosophical underpinning. We will discover we need them to serve us as thinking tools, not to turn us into slaves of our own conceits.

Bold added.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20927975.600-the-selfish-metaphor-conceits-of-evolution.html

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

And here is what Engels had to say about the sort of ideological science that has you in its thrall:


"1) Of the Darwinian doctrine I accept the theory of evolution, but Darwin's method of proof (struggle for life, natural selection) I consider only a first, provisional, imperfect expression of a newly discovered fact. Until Darwin's time the very people who now see everywhere only struggle for existence (Vogt, Büchner, Moleschott, etc.) emphasized precisely cooperation in organic nature, the fact that the vegetable kingdom supplies oxygen and nutriment to the animal kingdom and conversely the animal kingdom supplies plants with carbonic acid and manure, which was particularly stressed by Liebig. Both conceptions are justified within certain limits, but the one is as one-sided and narrow-minded as the other. The interaction of bodies in nature -- inanimate as well as animate -- includes both harmony and collision, struggle and cooperation. When therefore a self-styled natural scientist takes the liberty of reducing the whole of historical development with all its wealth and variety to the one-sided and meagre phrase 'struggle for existence,' a phrase which even in the sphere of nature can be accepted only cum grano salis [with a grain of salt -- RL], such a procedure really contains its own condemnation.

"...I should therefore attack -- and perhaps will when the time comes -- these bourgeois Darwinists in about the following manner:

"The whole Darwinists teaching of the struggle for existence is simply a transference from society to living nature of Hobbes's doctrine of bellum omnium contra omnes [from Hobbes's De Cive and Leviathan, chapter 13-14] and of the bourgeois-economic doctrine of competition together with Malthus's theory of population. When this conjurer's trick has been performed (and I questioned its absolute permissibility, as I have indicated in point 1, particularly as far as the Malthusian theory is concerned), the same theories are transferred back again from organic nature into history and it is now claimed that their validity as eternal laws of human society has been proved. The puerility of this procedure is so obvious that not a word need be said about it. But if I wanted to go into the matter more thoroughly I should do so by depicting them in the first place as bad economists and only in the second place as bad naturalists and philosophers.

"4) The essential difference between human and animal society consists in the fact that animals at most collect while men produce. This sole but cardinal difference alone makes it impossible simply to transfer laws of animal societies to human societies....

"At a certain stage the production of man attains such a high-level that not only necessaries but also luxuries, at first, true enough, only for a minority, are produced. The struggle for existence -- if we permit this category for the moment to be valid -- is thus transformed into a struggle for pleasures, no longer for mere means of subsistence but for means of development, socially produced means of development, and to this stage the categories derived from the animal kingdom are no longer applicable. But if, as has now happened, production in its capitalist form produces a far greater quantity of means of subsistence and development than capitalist society can consume because it keeps the great mass of real producers artificially away from these means of subsistence and development; if this society is forced by its own law of life constantly to increase this output which is already too big for it and therefore periodically, every 10 years, reaches the point where it destroys not only a mass of products but even productive forces -- what sense is their left in all this talk of 'struggle for existence'? The struggle for existence can then consist only in this: that the producing class takes over the management of production and distribution from the class that was hitherto entrusted with it but has now become incompetent to handle it, and there you have the socialist revolution.

"...Even the mere contemplation of previous history as a series of class struggles suffices to make clear the utter shallowness of the conception of this history as a feeble variety of the 'struggle for existence.' I would therefore never do this favour to these false naturalists....

"6) On the other hand I cannot agree with you that the 'bellum omnium contra omnes' was the first phase of human development. In my opinion, the social instinct was one of the most essential levers of the evolution of man from the ape. The first man must have lived in bands and as far as we can peer into the past we find that this was the case...." [Engels to Lavrov, 17/11/1875. Bold added.]

And this is not just my view, or that of Engels and Midgley, it is also the view of Stephen Jay Gould, Richard Lewontin and Steven Rose -- among others.

I will add a list of books and articles later that shows this is in fact the consensus view among Marxist and left-wing scientists.

[The Vegan Marxist]

TVM:



Can you substantiate that slur from the 15000+ posts i have posted here? If not, withdraw it.

Pehaps you haven't read this comment of Marx's:



You:



In fact, I have read it far too many times than is good for me. We also debated it here a few months ago:

http://www.revleft.com/vb/why-left-hostile-t132454/index.html

And here's a recent atticle from the New Scientist on this:



Bold added.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20927975.600-the-selfish-metaphor-conceits-of-evolution.html

:laugh:

Midgley is a joke! She completely distorts the works of Dawkins and what his view of Darwinism is. She constantly purports that Dawkins is an advocate to "social darwinism" of a competitive market. Though, this is an absolute lie. Given his very opposition to economists distorting the very ideal of Darwinism to suit their profit-driven wants.

In her own works, Science and Poetry, she claims that memetics, gene selection, and sociobiology as being "reductionist". How one can come up with such a bullshit theory is beyond me.

Midgley is a quack, which I can only assume you to be one as well since you support her absurd theories, and has been refuted time and again. Here, actually learn something for once:

http://cdn.cloudfiles.mosso.com/c114612/documents/2008/Reply_to_Midgley.pdf

[Black Sheep]

Genes can no more be 'selfish' than they can be magnanimous or greedy.
It's a metaphor, about the intrinsic property and """tendency""" of life to replicate itself.
Life's "quantum" is self-replicating molecules -> DNA -> genes.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Ok, here it is:

Dupré, J. (2001), Human Nature And The Limits Of Science (Oxford University Press).

--------, (2002), Humans And Other Animals (Oxford University Press).

--------, (2003a), Darwin's Legacy. What Evolution Means Today (Oxford University Press).

--------, (2003b), 'On Human Nature (http://www.humanaffairs.sk/dupre.pdf)', Journal of the Slovakian Academy of Sciences 13, pp. 109-122.

Eldredge, N., and Gould, S. (2001), Biology Rules (http://www.stephenjaygould.org/reviews/consilience.html).

Gasper, P. (2004), 'Is Biology Destiny (http://www.isreview.org/issues/38/genes.shtml)?', International Socialist Review 38.

--------, (2005), 'Genes, Evolution And Human Nature (http://www.isreview.org/issues/40/genes2.shtml)', International Socialist Review 41, pp.57-65.

Gould, S. (1983a), The Panda's Thumb. More Reflections In Natural History (Penguin Books).

--------, (1983b), 'Caring Groups And Selfish Genes', in Gould (1983a), pp.72-78.

--------, (1990a), An Urchin In The Storm (Penguin Books).

--------, (1990b), 'Cardboard Darwinism', in Gould (1990a), pp.26-50.

--------, (1990c), 'Genes On The Brain', in Gould (1990a), pp.107-23.

--------, (1990d), 'Nurturing Nature', in Gould (1990a), pp.145-54.

--------, (1997a), 'Darwinian Fundamentalism (http://www.stephenjaygould.org/reviews/dennett_exchange.html)', New York Review of Books, 12/06/97, pp.34-37.

--------, (1997b), 'Evolution: The Pleasures Of Pluralism (http://www.stephenjaygould.org/reviews/gould_pluralism.html)', New York Review of Books, 26/06/97, pp.47-52.

--------, (2001), 'The Evolutionary Definition Of Selective Agency, Validation Of The Theory Of Hierarchical Selection, And Fallacy Of The Selfish Gene', in Singh, et al (2001), pp.208-34.

--------, (2002), The Structure Of Evolutionary Theory (Harvard University Press).

Gould, S., and Lewontin, R, (1979), 'The Spandrels Of San Marco And The Panglossian Paradigm: A Critique Of The Adaptionist Programme (http://www.aaas.org/spp/dser/03_Areas/evolution/perspectives/Gould_Lewontin_1979.shtml)', Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, series B 205, pp.581-98; reprinted in Ridley (1997), pp.139-54, and Gould (2006a), pp.417-37.

Lewontin, R. (2000a), It Ain't Necessarily So. The Dream Of The Human Genome And Other Illusions (Granta Books).

--------, (2000b), The Triple Helix (Harvard University Press).

Lewontin, R., and Levins, R. (2007), Biology Under The Influence. Dialectical Essays On Ecology, Agriculture, And Health (Monthly Review Press).

Rose, H., and Rose S. (2010), 'Darwin And After', New Left Review 63, May/June 2010, pp.91-113.

Rose, S. (2005), Lifelines. Biology, Freedom, Determinism (Vintage, 2nd ed).

Rose, S., Kamin, L. and Lewontin, R, (1984), Not In Our Genes. Biology, Ideology And Human Nature (Penguin Books).

Rose, S., and Rose, H. (2000) (eds.), Alas Poor Darwin. Arguments Against Evolutionary Psychology (Jonathan Cape).

Singh, R., Krimbas, C., Paul, D., and Beatty, J. (2001) (eds.), Thinking About Evolution. Essays In Honour of Richard Lewontin, Volume Two: Historical, Philosophical, And Political Perspectives (Cambridge University Press).

But there are many more...

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

TVM:


Midgley is a joke! She completely distorts the works of Dawkins and what his view of Darwinism is. She constantly purports that Dawkins is an advocate to "social darwinism" of a competitive market. Though, this is an absolute lie. Given his very opposition to economists distorting the very ideal of Darwinism to suit their profit-driven wants.

Sure, Dawkins denies it, but as I showed in that earlier thread, what he in fact says implies it.

And, of course, she is merely saying what Engels said in general about Darwinian Fundamentalists like Dawkins.


In her own works, Science and Poetry, she claims that memetics, gene selection, and sociobiology as being "reductionist". How one can come up with such a bullshit theory is beyond me.

And she is right, it is reductionist.


Midgley is a quack, which I can only assume you to be one as well since you support her absurd theories, and has been refuted time and again. Here, actually learn something for once:

Maybe you do not know, but abuse is not an argument.

Perhaps your genes made you this way? :lol:

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

And thanks for the link to Dawkins's crass reply. I have, unfortunately, read it many times.

Midgely responded to it, as have others.

If I can find the links, I'll post them.

[The Vegan Marxist]

And thanks for the link to Dawkins's crass reply. I have, unfortunately, read it many times.

Midgely responded to it, as have others.

If I can find the links, I'll post them.

Don't even bother. I've read Midgely's bullshit arguments before. They're amazingly erroneous.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Black Sheep:


It's a metaphor, about the intrinsic property and """tendency""" of life to replicate itself.

I know its a metaphor!

The point is that it's a very poor one and it's an ideological one.


Life's "quantum" is self-replicating molecules -> DNA -> genes.

But, they do not 'self-replicate'.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

TVM:


Don't even bother. I've read Midgely's bullshit arguments before. They're amazingly erroneous.

Ah, yet more scatological abuse in place of argument. No change there then...

[You will find that Marxist scientists also make the same points as she does, if you follow the links, or consult the books and articles I listed above -- or, failing that, you can post yet more abuse...:lol:]

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Oh, and we are still waiting for your proof of this:


Everything's ideology and not science to you Rosa. That's practically your entire themed dialog on RevLeft.

Or should we just consult your 'selfish genes'?

[The Vegan Marxist]

Oh, and we are still waiting for your proof of this:



Or should we just consult your 'selfish genes'?

Stop being an outright *****, Rosa. You know damn well what I mean, with your anti-dialectical materialist beliefs, and now your anti-sociobiology, anti-gene selection theories. Seriously, just stop embarrassing yourself, Rosa.

The authors you brought forth, although some I have not read, overall, completely distort the very ideals of evolutionary psychology/biology, and deserve nothing but to be thrown in the trash.

[Meridian]

Stop being an outright *****, Rosa. You know damn well what I mean, with your anti-dialectical materialist beliefs, and now your anti-sociobiology, anti-gene selection theories. Seriously, just stop embarrassing yourself, Rosa.

The authors you brought forth, although some I have not read, overall, completely distort the very ideals of evolutionary psychology/biology, and deserve nothing but to be thrown in the trash.
The only one embarrassing themselves here is you.

You respond to arguments with abuse and empty-handed dismissal, and when that's not enough you resort to sexist language.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

TVM:


Stop being an outright *****, Rosa.

Well, at least you are a consistent abuser.:lol:

Before it was another woman, Mary Midgley. Now it's me.

I hope the mods don't see this latest, sexist barrage of yours, or their non-selfish genes might consider giving you a non-genetic infraction.


You know damn well what I mean,

No, since I do not share your 'produce-garbled-arguments' genes.


with your anti-dialectical materialist beliefs,

Which you can't defend either, without yet more abuse.:lol:


and now your anti-sociobiology, anti-gene selection theories. Seriously, just stop embarrassing yourself, Rosa.

In fact, anti-sociobiology is the consensus opinion among Marxist biologists, including those who accept that mystical theory of yours -- as those references above will show you if you care to raise your eyes from the ideologically-tainted science that still holds you in its grip -- and seems to make you prefer scatological language to argument.

So, anti-sociobiology has nothing to do with anti-dialectics.

But, I can understand why you might want to deflect attention from your plight.


The authors you brought forth, although some I have not read, overall, completely distort the very ideals of evolutionary psychology/biology, and deserve nothing but to be thrown in the trash.

What a wonderfully scientitfic attitude -- don't bother to show with reasoned argument that others are wrong, just burn their books.

Now, where have we heard that one before...?

[May I remind you that the guys I referenced are not just Marxists, many are leading biologists -- for example, Richard Lewontin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Lewontin), a Marxist and a dialectician, to boot.]

[The Vegan Marxist]

Before it was another woman, Mary Midgley. Now it's me.

I hope the mods don't see this latest, sexist barrage of yours, or their non-selfish genes might consider giving you a non-genetic infraction.

I'm not even going to bother with the rest of your diatribe. But this, on the other hand, is amusing. You think that just because I use the term "*****", I then mean woman. Which is an amusing error on your part. Just as is your assumption that I wholeheartedly disagree with Midgley solely because she's a woman.

Erroneous statements such as this, Rosa, are what makes you an embarrassment. I say the word *****, you then flood the arguments with claims of sexism. This is the same bullshit counterargument Israel uses against those who are anti-zionist and say the term "Jew". They then flood, as you flood, the arguments presented with claims of "anti-semitism".

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

TVM:


I'm not even going to bother with the rest of your diatribe.

Indeed, just stick your fingers in your ears and sing "La, La, La..."


But this, on the other hand, is amusing. You think that just because I use the term "*****", I then mean woman.

Well, shall we ask the mods? I rather think they'll agree with me.


Which is an amusing error on your part. Just as is your assumption that I wholeheartedly disagree with Midgley solely because she's a woman.

Let's look at the evidence so far: Midgley is a woman; you abuse her and refuse to argue. Then you call me a '*****' and refuse to argue some more.

Not looking too good, is it?

I bet even your non-selfish genes can see that...


Erroneous statements such as this, Rosa, are what makes you an embarrassment. I say the word *****, you then flood the arguments with claims of sexism. This is the same bullshit counterargument Israel uses against those who are anti-zionist and say the term "Jew". They then flood, as you flood, the arguments presented with claims of "anti-semitism".

Then why did you use the word '*****' -- a well-known term of sexist abuse?

[The Vegan Marxist]

TVM:



Indeed, just stick your fingers in your ears and sing "La, La, La..."



Well, shall we ask the mods? I rather think they'll agree with me.



Let's look at the evidence so far: Midgley is a woman; you abuse her and refuse to argue. Then you call me a '*****' and refuse to argue some more.

Not looking too good, is it?

I bet even your non-selfish genes can see that...



Then why did you use the word '*****' -- a well-known term of sexist abuse?

I don't use it under sexist terms. I'm far from being a sexist. I call you a ***** because you're being a *****. And personally, I don't give a damn what the moderators think. Your only argument is that because you're both women, and I disagree with you two, that's why I disagree with you. "A leads to B", which is nothing more than a post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

TVM, compounding the abuse by repeating it:


I don't use it under sexist terms. I'm far from being a sexist. I call you a ***** because you're being a *****.

That's like someone claiming to be an anti-racist who then uses the 'N' word to abuse an African American comrade!:lol:

You obviously think it a good idea that when you find yourself in a hole, you should keep digging.:lol:


And personally, I don't give a damn what the moderators think.

Then you'll not be around here too long.

Even so, I promise to organise an unbelievebly badly attended fairwell party in your honour.


Your only argument is that because you're both women, and I disagree with you two, that's why I disagree with you. "A leads to B", which is nothing more than a post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy.

Except, you keep calling me a '*****'.

[The Vegan Marxist]

TVM, compounding the abuse by repeating it:



That's like someone claiming to be an anti-racist who then uses the 'N' word to abuse an African American comrade!:lol:

You obviously think it a good idea that when you find yourself in a hole, you should keep digging.:lol:



Then you'll not be around here too long.

Even so, I promise to organise an unbelievebly badly attended fairwell party in your honour.



Except, you keep calling me a '*****'.

It's not sexist to me, and it's not intended to be sexist. If you wish, I'll rephrase myself, and instead called you an asshole. How's that? Suit you any? Doesn't change anything.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

TVM, now backtracking fast:


It's not sexist to me,

So?


and it's not intended to be sexist.

Except you specifically chose a well-known term of sexist abuse.


If you wish, I'll rephrase myself, and instead called you an asshole. How's that? Suit you any? Doesn't change anything.

I'm glad to see that you have now returned to your previous anal fixation.

Which means, of course, that all you have in your 'selfish-gene motivated' arsenal, is yet more abuse.:lol:

[The Vegan Marxist]

I'm tired of this. Reason I don't take time to refute everything you say is due to it, quite frankly, being unnecessary and time consuming - time that I do not have. So, instead, I'll post a video of Dawkins and Pinker going into Evolutionary Psychology, explaining in detail the reality due to E.P.:

yIMReUsxTt4

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Thanks for posting the above video from that right-wing ideologue, Pinker.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

And here's an article debunking Pinker's ideas -- for TVM to ignore:


Meet the Flintstones

By Simon Blackburn

The Blank Slate:

The Modern Denial of Human Nature

By Stephen Pinker.

I.

When the hoary old question of nature versus nurture comes around, sides form quickly. And as Leavis once remarked, whenever this is so, we can suspect that the differences have little to do with thinking. Still, the question certainly obsesses thinkers, and crops up in various terminologies and under various rubrics: human essence versus historical accident, intrinsic nature versus social construction, nativism versus empiricism. In the ancient world the nativist Plato held that we come into the world equipped with knowledge obtained in a previous life, while the empiricist Aristotle denied it. In our own time Chomsky has revived the nativist doctrine that our capacity for language is innate, and some ultras have even held that our whole conceptual repertoire is innate. We did not ever have to learn anything. We had only to let loose what we already have.

There is a standard move, call it the Demon Move, in such a debate. First we establish our own reasonable credentials. We, the good guys, are not taken in by the labels. We recognize, of course, that any human being is the result of both nature and nurture. There is the biological or genetic endowment and there is the environment in which the genetic endowment gets expressed. We good guys understand that it is meaningless to ask whether iron rusts because of the nature of iron or because of the environment in which the iron is put. We know that the rusting requires both. It is the deluded others, the bad guys, who forget entirely about one of these components.

So if you wish to demonize theorists on the nature side, present them as genetic determinists, holding that there is no more to growing up than following a formula written in the genes. These dangerous fools think that iron is programmed to rust wherever you put it, as if oxygen and damp had nothing to do with it. And if you are demonizing theorists on the nurture side, then portray them as holding that human beings have no characteristics at all except those that are inscribed by environment and culture. These dangerous fools think that the chemical nature of iron has nothing to do with whether it rusts. (There is also a second-order or meta-demonizing move to make. Not only have the dangerous fools got themselves into an extreme position, they also have the gall to paint people like us as ourselves extreme. They are not only blind to their own extremism, they are blind also to our moderation. The things they call us! They must be doubly demonic.)

The irony is that having satisfactorily trashed the other side, people tend not to stay in the reasonable middle that they claim to occupy. The fig-leaf of moderation is very quickly discarded. Just as in football a defeat for one side is a victory for the other, and in politics a defeat for the left is a victory for the right, so here a defeat of the others is a victory for whichever extreme appealed in the first place. We want simplicity, and our binary thinking is not hospitable to compromise or to pluralism. George W. Bush can woo the people by saying that you are either with us or against us. He cannot do so by saying that you are either with us or against us or somewhere in between. It appears that only fitfully and with effort can we keep it in our heads that iron rusts owing to a number of factors. In our hearts, we are pulled one way or the other.

This is certainly so with the debate about human nature. The dichotomy between nature and nurture rapidly acquires political and emotional implications. To put it crudely, the right likes genes and the left likes culture, although there are cross currents even in this scheme. (Chomsky is a left-wing nativist.) But the natural thought is that if, say, crime is scripted in the genes, then there is no reason on that score to work for the equality of wealth and the eradication of poverty, because you will get crime anyhow. If mad jealousy or rape are evolved strategies for unsuccessful males, then there is no reason on that score to promote an atmosphere of respect for women, because you will get mad jealousy or rape anyhow. Steven Pinker insists that politics needs first and foremost a view of human nature, since only unrealistic politics will be the consequence of unrealistic views.

Pinker presents himself as entirely reasonable, naturally; and for large parts of his book he succeeds in being so. He is certainly a skillful expositor and a persuasive writer. He is intelligent and humane. There is a lot to be learned from <I>The Blank Slate<I>. Pinker seems to know everything (the bibliography runs to nearly thirty pages of very small print). He certainly has opinions about everything, and answers to all the questions. The panache and the promise are intoxicating. It is difficult to talk with perfect certainty of human nature, but where Shakespeare and Proust could only crawl, Pinker gallops, He is the messianic prophet of a new world, in which a confluence of sciences finally delivers us the truth about ourselves.

Students of rhetoric will also admire his mastery of the Demon Move. As is clear from the book’s title, it is the nurture side of the debate that is Pinker’s demon. He hails from the citadel of nativism, the linguistic and philosophy departments at M.I.T. The enemy is empiricism, and the blank slate of the title is the “tabula rasa” or white paper to which John Locke famously compared the human mind. The doctrine of the blank slate is taken to deny that we have a nature at all. The blank slate is the universal human endowment, which waits passively to be written on by experience and environment. It has no nature; or to put it another way, nothing in its nature determines the upshot when experience does its work. It is the clay waiting for the sculptor to form it, and the sculptor can make anything at all of it. It is this model of the mind, and its political and practical implications, that are Pinker’s target.

We might feel some disquiet about Pinker’s polemic when we remember that Locke himself held no such view and intended no such view by his famous analogy. He is perfectly happy with the idea that the nature of the slate or paper may determine what can be written on it. As a good Christian, Locke believed that an All-Wise Maker has granted us a very definite constitution, enabling us to know what we need to know and not much more. We can know what matters to us and know how to do what is good for us. But Locke also believes in our fallen nature, and he is constantly harping on “the narrow measure of our capacities” and the ways in which we are not fitted for various kinds of understanding, whereas better endowed creatures, such as angels, might be. Locke, in other words, thought that basic powers and limitations of our human nature determined the scope and the limits of our understanding. You cannot think that, if you also deny that we have a human nature at all.

Locke wanted only to deny innate ideas and innate knowledge, not innate powers or tendencies, nor innate limitations, nor innate cognitive and emotional capacities. This may sound like a mere historical quibble, but it arouses a powerful doubt about Pinker’s diagnosis of modernity. If Locke did not hold the doctrine of the blank slate, then Leibniz and Hume and Kant, not to mention the massed ranks of churchmen declaiming about human depravity and Freudians declaiming about the nature of men and women, most certainly did not hold it either. And then its status as a central and unsalutary determinant of modern thought looks a little shaky.

Still, Pinker insists that the doctrine of the blank slate is one of a trio of views that have dominated modern life, wreaking havoc in education, politics, and culture generally. Skipping for a moment, the third member of the Pinker’s malign Trinity is Cartesian dualism: the notorious separation of mind and body expressed for the modern era by Descartes. This doctrine, that of the ghost in the machine, strictly separates the mind or soul from the body. And by doing so it takes the soul outside the sphere of mechanical or scientific explanation. It splits the world of the mind from the world of science. It is often supposed to protect our cherished free will. Pinker thinks that this bad idea has obstructed the emergence of a genuine science of the mind, which is still struggling to emerge from its oppression. Here he is on stronger ground, since Cartesian dualism has surely influenced many people, and goes on doing so. It is the philosophy that makes the survival of the soul after bodily death intelligible. It is also a philosophy that makes downward causation, from mind to body, impossible to understand, enabling the cruder kind of theorist to deny that it happens.

The second Pinker’s unholy Trinity is in some ways the most interesting. It is Rousseau’s doctrine of the noble savage, or the view that human beings are naturally unselfish and peaceful and happy, and that our greed and violence and misery are entirely the products of culture or civilization. Early in the book Pinker writes:

Nobody can fail to recognize the influence of the doctrine of the Noble Savage in contemporary consciousness. We see it in the current respect for all things natural (natural foods, natural medicines, natural childbirth) and the distrust of the man-made, the unfashionability of authoritarian styles of childrearing and education, and the understanding of social problems as repairable defects in our institutions rather than as tragedies inherent to the human condition.

Here we may feel another stirring of discomfort. The passage and its tone of certainty nicely illustrate the way the Demon Move works. For on the face of it the features of contemporary thought that Pinker here highlights admit of much more nuanced, and sensible, explanations than any simple doctrine of the Noble Savage. Perhaps we like natural foods because artificial foods taste so ghastly by comparison, as anyone returning to the United States from almost anywhere else will testify. Perhaps we like natural medicines because we mistrust the influence of the drug companies on what are presented as results in pharmacology. Perhaps we like natural childbirth (unless things go wrong) because we think that in this area at least evolution might have resulted in something fairly optimal, or perhaps like my own daughter we have a parent who strongly resented being forced to take unpleasant and dangerous drugs like pethadone by a profession bent on making things easy for itself. And perhaps we dislike authoritarian styles of childrearing not because we think children are naturally saintly, but because we have learned to doubt whether violence is the best way to eradicate violence. Finally, perhaps it is our policy to think of social problems as repairable because sometimes there is just a chance that they are, and if there is, hand-wringing over their tragic inevitability will not find the repair. Or perhaps we are just more careful about inferring tragic inevitability from science. To avoid such a mistake it is good to remember examples like this. Our susceptibility to cholera is a result of our genome, but the repair lay outside, in the public health provision of clean water.

In other words, right from the start there is a question-mark over Pinker’s historical method. It may be that an extreme view, the doctrine of the Noble Savage, has influenced some people at some times. But few parents retain the belief that their infants are angels for very long, and the ruthless European extermination of indigenous peoples everywhere scarcely testifies to the general belief in their superior nobility. A more detailed history, either of parenting or of colonialism, would uncover a whole tapestry of shifting and conflicting attitudes. So we ought to worry about the ease with which Pinker conjures his demons.

This is especially so given that the doctrine of the blank slate is inconsistent with the doctrine of the noble savage. The latter talks of innate tendencies to peace, happiness, and altruism, whereas the former denies innate tendencies at all. Can people really have held both? Pinker notices the problem, but minimizes it on the grounds that if you think there is nothing there to begin with, then at least you think there is nothing harmful there, and that is half-way to accommodating the idea of innate purity and nobility. Perhaps, but the association remains imperfect, and the more we test it, the harder it is to see modern life as really dominated by the diabolical Trinity. Pinker indeed quotes, very effectively, some hair-raising blank-slate claims, especially from the behaviorists J. B. Watson and B. F. Skinner, who claimed to be able to turn anyone into anything with sufficient conditioning But then these behaviorist advertisings had nothing whatever to do with belief in the noble savage, nor in free will, with both of which they fit badly.

Still, it is not for its cultural history that people are buying this book in alarming numbers, but for the promise of a new synthesis, a science of the mind that finally tells us who we are, what is possible for us, how our politics should be organized, how people should be brought up, what to expect of ethics, or in short, how to live. In the old days, philosophers, dramatists, historians, anthropologists, writers and poets monopolized these subjects. Now behavioral economists, biologists, cognitive scientists, evolutionary theorists and neurophysiologists occupy the territory. A brave new dawn is upon us.

II.

If we imagine a score from 0 (genes have nothing to do with human nature) to 10 (culture has nothing to do with human nature), I should guess that Pinker scores about 9. He holds, for example, that the way children turn out is almost wholly unaffected by how their parents bring them up. This is mostly certified by studies of identical twins brought up apart, although here he does not refer to Cyril Burt, the British psychologist who wrecked the education system on the basis of such evidence, having made it all up.

Actually, there is a whole lot more to worry about with twins studies. Their results are expressed in terms of the heritability of properties, or proportion of variance supposed due to genetic factors. There is already a worry, since by the time of birth the twins’ genes have been expressing themselves in identical environment for nine months, and the time of separation and its extent are confounding factors (many “separated” twins are brought up within the extended family). The results of this research have included such gems as the heritability of milk and soda intake (high) or of fruit juice and diet soda (not so high). What is not usually stressed, and not stressed here, is that any measure of heritability is highly contextual. In a world of clones, the heritability of properties is zero; in a world of absolute sameness of environment, it goes to 100%. That is, if iron is put in a uniform environment, differences of rust are 100% due to difference of composition, but if identical samples of iron are put in a variety of environments, differences of rust are 100% due to environment. Heritability has also little or nothing to do with the malleability of the trait in question. In Swedish twins studies, heritability estimates for regular tobacco use was given as three times as great for men as for women, but for women it also ranged from zero to sixty percent in three different age cohorts, presumably because of changing cultural pressures on female smoking. Pinker is either not aware of the health warnings attached to this kind of research, or suppresses mention of them.

Anyhow, he thinks that violence in America is not to be approached in terms of media violence, childhood abuse, guns, discrimination, poverty, divorce, alcohol, drugs, or indeed anything except Hobbes’s view of the inevitable nature of human aggression. Indeed, he writes as if any explanation of human phenomena that invokes culture is positing a “superorganism” or a free-floating “cloud” lying above and beyond the individual.

Pinker believes that anybody who scores around 5 on my scale is in the grip of his demon myths, and really scores 0. So he routinely sets tests for the other side and parades their inability to meet them, without revisiting the question of whether his side can meet them. Thus he makes much of the fact that if exposure to the media were implicated in violence, we might expect Canada’s homicide rate to be about the same as that of the United States, while in fact it runs at about one quarter. But Pinker is silent about the fact that if nothing but a shared Hobbesian human nature were the explanation, we would also expect an identical homicide rate. (To be fair, in a different part of the book Pinker does mention an explanation of the difference in the different history of expansion of the two nations_a geographical and cultural explanation that leaves you wondering about the efficacy of his otherwise cherished biological explanation). There is also a rather startling absence of countervailing evidence, such as the recent Surgeon-General’s report about media violence , or the well-known meta-study of studies of violence by Haejung Paik and George Comstock, which found in 1994 that media violence affects young peoples’ chance of being violent about as much as smoking affects the chance of lung cancer.

In sum, Pinker is an unblushing proponent of “evolutionary psychology,” the descendant of sociobiology that has swept campuses and bookstores alike for the last decade or so. The building blocks of this addition to science are well-known. At its simplest, we find some allegedly common human trait, and we explain why we have it by imagining how a propensity towards it might have been beneficial in the Flintstone world, or in the Pleistocene conditions in which apes evolved into humans. Suppose, for instance, a finding that women typically prefer richer and taller men. We take such a fact, or factoid, and then hypothesize that this preference is an adaptation in the biologist’s sense. It contributed to increased reproductive success. That is, there is some mechanism (at its simplest, a gene or two) that increases the probability of that preference, and women who have it reproduce more successfully than women who do not. Their mate’s riches enable their children to survive in greater numbers, and their mate’s height makes them better hunters (ignore the fact that they are presumably worse gatherers). Women without the gene gradually lose out. Only those with it produced lineages descending as far as the present.

Such stories go nicely with other views about the mind. One is the doctrine of the “modular mind”, often known as the Swiss army knife picture of the mind. The mind is not one huge general-purpose information processor, but an agglomeration of modules specifically dedicated to particular tasks. It is not so much one tool as a commonwealth of little tools. So Pinker likes to talk of a faculty such as sympathy or of a propensity to aggression as switches and knobs that can be turned on or off, or set at one level or another.

Pinker rightly notices that if we go in for these stories we must be extremely careful to distinguish our overt psychologies, which he calls proximate mechanisms, from their underlying evolutionary function. I can illustrate this little trick with the juicy case of sexual desire. The evolutionary rationale is reproduction. But the overt objects of desire need have nothing whatever to do with that rationale: just think of the huge variety of non-reproductive sexual pleasures to which people are so irresistibly drawn, and the precautions that they take in order to avoid reproduction. People want sex without wanting to reproduce, and for that matter they sometimes want to reproduce without wanting sex. We should also notice that the example puts a question mark in front of the idea of a single human nature, since the overt objects of desire are so extraordinarily various. Indeed, evolutionary stories about psychology should embrace this, since evolution can only happen where variation exists and selection works on it, which fits badly with the generally monolithic ambition of finding one “real” human nature within.

Pinker can be admirably clear about these things, but he falters when it comes to their applications. Consider one of the poster-children of evolutionary psychology, the robust finding by Martin Daly and Margo Wilson that step-children are more at risk from parental abuse than natural children. Pinker writes:

Daly and Wilson had originally examined the abuse statistics to test a prediction from evolutionary psychology. Parental love is selected over evolutionary time because it compels parents to protect and nurture their children, who are likely to carry the genes giving rise to parental love. In any species in which someone else’s offspring are likely to enter the family circle, selection will favor a tendency to prefer one’s own, because in the cold reckoning of natural selection an investment in the unrelated children would go to waste. A parent’s patience will tend to run out with stepchildren more quickly than with biological children, and in extreme cases this can lead to abuse.

Well, maybe. Actually, it is not clear that evolutionary psychology predicts good fathers at all: back in the Pleistocene, gadabout cads presumably fathered more offspring than stay-at-home dads. I seem to recall that Wilma Flintstone was a jealous and possessive wife. But in any event, we might agree that if Abel and Bertha have a child, and then Abel disappears and Chuck hooks up with Bertha, it seems plausible that Chuck should care less for the child than for one that he himself had fathered with Bertha. This is what the statistics bear out. But now we may reflect that if Abel and Bertha bought a dog or a sofa, and then Abel disappeared and Chuck hooked up with Bertha, it seems equally plausible that Chuck should care less for the step-dog or the step-sofa than if he had bought them together with Bertha. My bet would be that an incomer’s abuse of step-dogs and step-sofas is worse than abuse of dogs and sofas couples buy together. Conversely, when the genetic link is absent but the togetherness is present, as when couples decide together to adopt children, parental love seems to function perfectly well: at least Pinker does not suggest otherwise. Normal people take pleasure in the doings of children in general. The mothers at a playgroup do not typically snarl at one another’s children for being genetic competitors to their own.

The point is not that parental love is anything other than an adaptation: such a notion is absurd. The point is that its strength and its direction can be quite independent of any belief in a genetic link with the object of love. It may be that, as Pinker says, in the cold reckoning of natural selection Chuck’s investment in his adopted offspring goes to waste. How fortunate, then, that Chuck’s own reckoning is not that one. Indeed, if Chuck is anything like a good parent, he will not be thinking in terms of investment and return at all. Supposing that Chuck’s reckoning has to be that of natural selection is no better than supposing that strength and direction sexual desire is proportionate to the expectation of reproductive results. From Augustine onwards, generations of churchmen have wished that this were so, but it isn’t.

Once we become properly alert to the huge distance between our overt psychologies and the evolutionary rationales that can be offered to explain them, the messianic promise of evolutionary psychology in general, and <I>The Blank Slate<I> in particular, begin to look awfully thin. Pinker says, and I am sure that he is right, that some faculties, or modules, incline us to greed, lust, malice, envy, anger and aggression. Others incline us to sympathy, foresight, self-respect, desire for the good opinion of others. And then we can exchange information with others, and personal and social change can come about when we do.

But suddenly the notion of a faculty or module starts to evaporate. The Swiss army knife may have a corkscrew that works however blunt the knife is. But if there is one thing clear about our psychologies, it is that the functioning of one module can affect the delivery of another module. Our tendency to anger is suppressed by our prudence. Even at the sensory level, how we smell something is affected by what we are told it is. In the right cultural climate, our greed is checked by our desire for the esteem of our fellows. We imitate and respond and adapt ourselves to the expectations of others. And this leaves scope, to put it mildly, for culture and ethics. It means we will no longer respond in the same way. We will no longer be made angry by what might have made us angry in a different milieu, or desire what we would have desired, or envy what we would have envied.

In his less doctrinaire moods, Pinker does not deny this. He quotes with approval Peter Singer’s image of the expanding circle, whereby our concerns can come to embrace not only ourselves but also our family, tribe, class, nation, race, humanity, and eventually animals, or even plants. The circle of our concerns can widen, and indeed has done so: “once the sympathy knob is in place, having evolved to enjoy the benefits of cooperation and exchange, it can be cranked up by new kinds of information that other folks are similar to oneself.” This sounds about right to me, apart from the mixed metaphor. And apart from the lingering sense that the evolutionary rationale of sympathy, the “benefits of cooperation and exchange” taint the purity of our concern for others, even at our best, which, to flog the horse once more, is like supposing that even sodomites and foot fetishists are secretly trying to reproduce.

III.

It sounds, then, as though there remains plenty of room for education and culture, conceived of as natural devices for turning up the good knobs, and turning down the bad ones. We would look to the inherited experience of history, or the experience of parents and educators, to find how to replace competition with cooperation, or aggression with peaceability. We would try to think seriously about why the homicide rate in Canada is one quarter that of the United States, and we would welcome narratives from historians or anthropologists telling us of similar variations. We would applaud the way in which peaceful Scandinavians have descended from bloodthirsty Vikings (Pinker’s example), and we would hope to reproduce whatever factors enabled this to happen. Biological theory cannot provide the answers, or the descendants would resemble the ancestors, since evolution has had too little time to act.

We might try saying that the Scandinavians and their ancestors share a psychology. They both seek to maximize their utility. Homo Economicus is each of us, a simple fellow, always and only asking: what’s most in it for me? The environment is relevant insofar as it means that sometimes peace might be the answer, and sometimes violence. Our human natures are not so much a blank slate as a slate with a single scratch on it. Pinker does not really believe this, and after all it would mean that blank slate theorists were very nearly right. But neither is he prepared to avoid it by admitting the vast variety of psychologies that history parades before us, and by celebrating the cultural transformations that give us some control over them. He insists on a one-way street: culture is the product of individual psychologies. You should not explain individual psychologies by reference to culture. We need to see “culture as a product of human desires rather than as a shaper of them.”

This is a very surprising ideology for a professional linguist, and so far as I can make out Pinker does nothing to defend it. Faced with the question “do we explain language in terms of individual language speakers, or individual language speakers by reference to language?”, the only possible answer seems to be that we have two-way traffic. We learn at our mothers’ knees, and when our generation grows up we transmit what we learned, modified by us individually and collectively, onwards to the next generation. The English language is a cultural resource, and there is nothing unscientific about invoking facts about it to explain facts about individuals. The trick is to remember that facts about culture are not facts about some cloudy superorganism, some transcendental spirit of the age hovering around in hyperspace. They are summaries of facts about ourselves and our interactions. What they summarize is the very, very important part of our environment that concerns our interactions with other people. Those interactions shape the way we speak, but also the way we hope and fear and take pride and feel shame. They summarize what we imitate and emulate and eventually what we grow to be.

So the Viking has ambitions, fears, conceptions of esteem, pride and honor, all of which he gets from his culture and which determine his bloodthirstiness. All of these are lacking to his pacific descendants, while other values have been put in their place. In other words, their psychologies are indeed different, and the interesting thing for politicians, educators, and parents is the question of how those differences came about, and how the progress that they represent can be cemented and duplicated. That is what culture is. Explaining the Scandinavian progress by reference to it is just as proper as explaining my accent by reference to the prevailing sound of English where I grew up. The Viking is bloodthirsty because he lives in a bloodthirsty culture. And the culture is bloodthirsty because of the people in it. You can have both, and there are no demons anywhere.

Once we get past the demonizing and the rhetoric, take proper notice of the space between overt psychology and evolutionary rationale for it, and lose any phobia of cultural phenomena, what is left? There are plenty of sensible and plausible observations about human beings in Pinker’s book. But it is not clear that any of them are particularly new: Hobbes and Adam Smith give us more than anybody else. And at least their insights have stood the test of time, unlike that of some more recent work. Consider again the example of media violence. Here it seems that psychologists cannot speak with one voice about its effects. But worse than that, much worse, they cannot even speak with one voice about what psychological studies find about its effects. That is, the meta-studies that Pinker cites flatly disagree with the meta-studies that I mentioned earlier. If this is the state of play, we do well to plead the privilege of skepticism. We also do well too not to jettison other cultural resources too quickly. The depressing thing about The Blank Slate is that behind the rhetoric and the salesmanship, I suspect that Pinker knows this as well as anyone else. <co enddot>

Simon Blackburn is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Cambridge. His books Think and Being Good are published by Oxford University Press.

http://www.phil.cam.ac.uk/~swb24/reviews/Pinker.htm

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

And, in addition to the references I posted earlier, comrades should read the following on 'Evolutionary Psychology' and 'Sociobiology':

Richardson, R. (2007), Evolutionary Psychology as Maladapted Psychology (MIT Press).

Kitcher, P. (1985), Vaulting Ambition. Sociobiology And The Quest For Human Nature (MIT Press).

Buller, D. (2005), Adapting Minds. Evolutionary Psychology And The Persistent Quest For Human Nature (MIT Press).

--------, (2007), 'Varieties Of Evolutionary Psychology', in Hull and Ruse (2007), pp.255-74.

Hull, D., and Ruse, M. (2007) (eds.), The Cambridge Companion To The Philosophy Of Biology (Cambridge University Press).

[The Vegan Marxist]

I'm not an advocate that human nature is the overall factor of thought and actions as Pinker may describe to. At most, genes play out as predispositions, rather than predeterminations.

But do you, Rosa, deny genetically-led behaviors? That both genes and social factors don't intertwine, in which leads to both thought and action?

[Sasha]

Infraction to tvm.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

TVM:


I'm not an advocate that human nature is the overall factor of thought and actions as Pinker may describe to. At most, genes play out as predispositions, rather than predeterminations.

Then it was unwise of you to post material from Pinker.


But do you, Rosa, deny genetically-led behaviors?

That is far too vague a question for me to anwer.


That both genes and social factors don't intertwine, in which leads to both thought and action?

I deny 'thought' has any genetic component. That is a philosophical not a scientific question, and, as I have shown, all such philosophical questions are non-sensical:

http://www.revleft.com/vb/all-philosophical-theories-t148537/index.html

[The Vegan Marxist]

I deny 'thought' has any genetic component. That is a philosophical not a scientific question, and, as I have shown, all such philosophical questions are non-sensical:

http://www.revleft.com/vb/all-philosophical-theories-t148537/index.html

So you don't believe that if damage is done to the frontal lobe of the brain, then one is not likely to determine good and bad decisions?

[synthesis]

Wait, wait, wait. The article is saying that "maternally expressed genes should reduce the child's dependence and hasten maturation"? I call bullshit.

[Black Sheep]

But, they do not 'self-replicate'.
We don't know exactly how or why this procedure works,as we don't know its origin and how it was formed.
The selfish gene metaphor is a good way though to explain it.

It's not ideological, ffs.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

The Black Sheep:


The selfish gene metaphor is a good way though to explain it.

It's a very poor metaphor, since the gene does not survive. A copy of it does. So how is the gene being 'selfish' even metaphorically?


It's not ideological, ffs.

When every ideologue of the right says socialism is not possible because we are all selfish, and this idea is then rooted in our genes, how is it not ideological?

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

TVM:


So you don't believe that if damage is done to the frontal lobe of the brain, then one is not likely to determine good and bad decisions?

That no more show that 'thougtht' exists in the brain than it shows that you exist in your telephone if someone blows it up and you can no more make calls.

But, we have already discussed this topic here:

http://www.revleft.com/vb/re-science-meridian-t146733/index.html

But you will need to read this to see what that was all about:

http://www.revleft.com/vb/rosa-cant-take-t146716/index.html

which was trashed by yet another 'believer' in free scientific debate at RevLeft

[The Vegan Marxist]

The Black Sheep:



It's a very poor metaphor, since the gene does not survive. A copy of it does. So how is the gene being 'selfish' even metaphorically?



When every ideologue of the right says socialism is not possible because we are all selfish, and this idea is then rooted in our genes, then how is it not ideological?

It's not based on ideology because there's a difference between saying genes acting out "selfishly" and someone naturally behaving selfishly.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

TVM:


It's not based on ideology because there's a difference between saying genes acting out "selfishly" and someone naturally behaving selfishly.

1. Genes can't literally be 'selfish' and they can't even be metaphorically 'selfish' (see my answer to Black Sheep).

2. Hence, since there is no good scientific reason to use this defective metaphor, there can only be one reason why this right-wing figure of speech was chosen: to 'justify' bourgeois economic and social theory, as the Marxist Biologists I referenced earlier all point out.

[Black Sheep]

When every ideologue of the right says socialism is not possible because we are all selfish, and this idea is then rooted in our genes, then how is it not ideological?
Jesus Rosa! That's a misconception of the metaphor and the WORD selfish, or even a willful misinterpretation.When put into context, it has clearly nothing to do with it, even Dawkins himself addressed and explained that, and added a chapter to newer editions of his book clarifying that.

So please stop naming the reasons of this theory/model/explanation "ideological".
You could argue in the same way about the theory of evolution, naming it an ideological construct, when it's not.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Black Sheep:


Jesus Rosa! That's a misconception of the metaphor and the WORD selfish, or even a willful misinterpretation.

So you say, but my argument says different.


When put into context, it has clearly nothing to do with it, even Dawkins himself addressed and explained that, and added a chapter to newer editions of his book clarifying that.

In other words, he had to admit that the word 'selfish' could not apply to genes, either literally or metaphorically, and for the reasons I have already laid out.


So please stop naming the reasons of this theory/model/explanation "ideological".

Then why did he choose this right-wing figure of speech, that he later indirectly had to concede does not work?


You could argue in the same way about the theory of evolution, naming it an ideological construct, when it's not

Indeed, I do so argue (and have so argued many times at RevLeft) this in relation to Darwinisn and Neo-Darwinism.

[Black Sheep]

Indeed, I do so argue (and have so argued many times at RevLeft) this in relation to Darwinisn and Neo-Darwinism.
You argue that the theory of evolution is an ideological construct and not a scientific fact?

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Black Sheep:


You argue that the theory of evolution is an ideological construct and not a scientific fact?

I do not doubt the fact of evolution, but, like Engels, I'm happy to label Darwinism (and particularly Neo-Darwinisn) as largely 'ideological'.

[Black Sheep]

I do not doubt the fact of evolution, but, like Engels, I'm happy to label Darwinism (and particularly Neo-Darwinisn) as largely 'ideological'.
But since it is a scientific fact, whatever ideology it favors is irrelevant,and labeling it is unnecesary.

It's like saying that the discovery of the altruistic gene is an ideological conspiracy of the egalitarianists.

Ideological consequences may imply ideological motive, but they don't lead to it.It's a side effect.

What you're doing here is undermining science and its method fundamentally.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Black Sheep:


But since it is a scientific fact, whatever ideology it favors is irrelevant,and labeling it is unnecesary.

Not so. The ideology comes in precisely where Engels pointed out (if you have seen his comments?) and over things like 'selfish genes', 'inclusive fitness,' genetic determinism' sociobiology and 'evolutionary psychology'.


It's like saying that the discovery of the altruistic gene is an ideological conspiracy of the egalitarianists.

Well, there is no such thing as an 'altruistic gene', so I can't comment.


Ideological consequences may imply ideological motive, but they don't lead to it.It's a side effect.

The ideology in fact skews the 'science'.

We already recognise this in economic and social theory, so why is it so hard to see it here?


What you're doing here is undermining science and its method fundamentally.

Not at all; in fact I am defending genuine science.

[Black Sheep]

Not so. The ideology comes in precisely where Engels pointed out (if you have seen his comments?) I don't care what engels said, the Theory of evolution was at a infant stage back then, so just give me your comments.


Well, there is no such thing as an 'altruistic gene', so I can't comment.Hasn't it been mapped?I pretty sure it has.
Anyway, rephrasing, it's like the long term survival benefits of a tit-for-tat strategy being a conspiracy of egalitarianists.


The ideology in fact skews the 'science'.
We already recognise this in economic and social theory, so why is it so hard to see it here?No, it doesn't , because science doesn't take into account ideology.It's not a part of the process.
In general, yes, scientific goals and priorities are affected by the dominant ideology.
But that's different, you question the validity of a discovery established to a level that's far beyond the minimum required, due to your ideology.


Not at all; in fact I am defending genuine science. But you are.You are labeling in a negative way a scientific discovery because you think it contradicts your ideology.That's ideal anti-science.
And the tragic thing is that it doesn't contradict your ideology : distorted versions and explanations of this discovery do, and they affect your judgement on the original finding.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Black Sheep:


I don't care what engels said, the Theory of evolution was at a infant stage back then, so just give me your comment

Mine is more-or-less the same as his:


"1) Of the Darwinian doctrine I accept the theory of evolution, but Darwin's method of proof (struggle for life, natural selection) I consider only a first, provisional, imperfect expression of a newly discovered fact. Until Darwin's time the very people who now see everywhere only struggle for existence (Vogt, Büchner, Moleschott, etc.) emphasized precisely cooperation in organic nature, the fact that the vegetable kingdom supplies oxygen and nutriment to the animal kingdom and conversely the animal kingdom supplies plants with carbonic acid and manure, which was particularly stressed by Liebig. Both conceptions are justified within certain limits, but the one is as one-sided and narrow-minded as the other. The interaction of bodies in nature -- inanimate as well as animate -- includes both harmony and collision, struggle and cooperation. When therefore a self-styled natural scientist takes the liberty of reducing the whole of historical development with all its wealth and variety to the one-sided and meagre phrase 'struggle for existence,' a phrase which even in the sphere of nature can be accepted only cum grano salis [with a grain of salt -- RL], such a procedure really contains its own condemnation.

"...I should therefore attack -- and perhaps will when the time comes -- these bourgeois Darwinists in about the following manner:

"The whole Darwinists teaching of the struggle for existence is simply a transference from society to living nature of Hobbes's doctrine of bellum omnium contra omnes [war of all against all -- RL] [from Hobbes's De Cive and Leviathan, chapter 13-14] and of the bourgeois-economic doctrine of competition together with Malthus's theory of population. When this conjurer's trick has been performed (and I questioned its absolute permissibility, as I have indicated in point 1, particularly as far as the Malthusian theory is concerned), the same theories are transferred back again from organic nature into history and it is now claimed that their validity as eternal laws of human society has been proved. The puerility of this procedure is so obvious that not a word need be said about it. But if I wanted to go into the matter more thoroughly I should do so by depicting them in the first place as bad economists and only in the second place as bad naturalists and philosophers.

"4) The essential difference between human and animal society consists in the fact that animals at most collect while men produce. This sole but cardinal difference alone makes it impossible simply to transfer laws of animal societies to human societies....

"At a certain stage the production of man attains such a high-level that not only necessaries but also luxuries, at first, true enough, only for a minority, are produced. The struggle for existence -- if we permit this category for the moment to be valid -- is thus transformed into a struggle for pleasures, no longer for mere means of subsistence but for means of development, socially produced means of development, and to this stage the categories derived from the animal kingdom are no longer applicable. But if, as has now happened, production in its capitalist form produces a far greater quantity of means of subsistence and development than capitalist society can consume because it keeps the great mass of real producers artificially away from these means of subsistence and development; if this society is forced by its own law of life constantly to increase this output which is already too big for it and therefore periodically, every 10 years, reaches the point where it destroys not only a mass of products but even productive forces -- what sense is their left in all this talk of 'struggle for existence'? The struggle for existence can then consist only in this: that the producing class takes over the management of production and distribution from the class that was hitherto entrusted with it but has now become incompetent to handle it, and there you have the socialist revolution.

"...Even the mere contemplation of previous history as a series of class struggles suffices to make clear the utter shallowness of the conception of this history as a feeble variety of the 'struggle for existence.' I would therefore never do this favour to these false naturalists....

"6) On the other hand I cannot agree with you that the 'bellum omnium contra omnes' was the first phase of human development. In my opinion, the social instinct was one of the most essential levers of the evolution of man from the ape. The first man must have lived in bands and as far as we can peer into the past we find that this was the case...." [Engels to Lavrov, 17/11/1875.]

And, of course, since then this ideology has only become more entrenched and has broadened considerably; indeed, it now infects genetics, too.


Hasn't it been mapped?I pretty sure it has.

Well, we'll need to see the proof, won't we?


Anyway, rephrasing, it's like the long term survival benefits of a tit-for-tat strategy being a conspiracy of egalitarianists.

Are you suggesting that plants and animals (and even 'genes') know some social theory?


No, it doesn't , because science doesn't take into account ideology.It's not a part of the process.

You seem to think that science floats somehow disembodied above society and is not persued by human beings, all of whom have a class position, have careers and reputations to protect and promote, or who are employed by large corporations and/or governments? And who have no hint of ideology in their heads, too?

But then you say:


In general, yes, scientific goals and priorities are affected by the dominant ideology.

I think you need to make your mind up.


But that's different, you question the validity of a discovery established to a level that's far beyond the minimum required, due to your ideology.

If it's a genuine scientific discovery, no problem, but if it has been infected with bourgeois ideology from its inception, as has been the case with evolutionary theory, then I think we have a duty to question it.


But you are.

Is there a 'not' missing from the above?


You are labeling in a negative way a scientific discovery because you think it contradicts your ideology.That's ideal anti-science.

And what 'ideology' is that, then?


And the tragic thing is that it doesn't contradict your ideology : distorted versions and explanations of this discovery do, and they affect your judgement on the original finding.

Well, if that is true of me (if it is), then why can't it be true of Darwin, or Dawkins?

[The Red Next Door]

this looks like ideology, not science:



Genes can no more be 'selfish' than they can be magnanimous or greedy.

said the man, who called someone a horrible parent, because got her child vaccinated. From a major fucking disease ; really, man, go take your ass somewhere and shut up with this nonsense.

[The Red Next Door]

Stop being an outright *****, Rosa. You know damn well what I mean, with your anti-dialectical materialist beliefs, and now your anti-sociobiology, anti-gene selection theories. Seriously, just stop embarrassing yourself, Rosa.

The authors you brought forth, although some I have not read, overall, completely distort the very ideals of evolutionary psychology/biology, and deserve nothing but to be thrown in the trash.

TVM; Stop using the B word

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

The Chump Next Door:


said the man, who called someone a horrible parent, because got her child vaccinated.

And where did I say that?


go take your ass somewhere and shut up with this nonsense.

So, it's now clear you have cornered the market in the above respect.

And well done too!

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

TCND:


TVM; Stop using the B word

The mods have already warned TVM about this.

[The Red Next Door]

I don't use it under sexist terms. I'm far from being a sexist. I call you a ***** because you're being a *****. And personally, I don't give a damn what the moderators think. Your only argument is that because you're both women, and I disagree with you two, that's why I disagree with you. "A leads to B", which is nothing more than a post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy.

You digging a ditch for yourself.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

^^^Let it go, he has stopped doing this and has been warned off!

[Black Sheep]

When this conjurer's trick has been performed [..], the same theories are transferred back again from organic nature into history and it is now claimed that their validity as eternal laws of human society has been proved.
This proves my point.Engels blames the bourgeoisie for usurping the principle of evolution,applying it to human societies, and claiming its validity from Darwinism.
He criticises an early form of social darwinism.


The puerility of this procedure is so obvious that not a word need be said about it. But if I wanted to go into the matter more thoroughly I should do so by depicting them in the first place as bad economists and only in the second place as bad naturalists and philosophers.
What i said!


The struggle for existence can then consist only in this: that the producing class takes over the management of production and distribution from the class that was hitherto entrusted with it but has now become incompetent to handle it, and there you have the socialist revolution.
He then proceeds to appoint the 'struggle for existence' principle to support the socialist rev.


I would therefore never do this favour to these false naturalists....False naturalists.He refers to bourgeoisie usurpers of darwinism.



Are you suggesting that plants and animals (and even 'genes') know some social theory?
No, i'm talking about social animals, where altruism and selfishness have a meaning.


I think you need to make your mind up.
Understand the difference between the process itself, and the motivations/goals/usage of the results.If you change the scientific process, then you no longer discover stuff,you are not certain about your findings, etc.
Ideology may affect science in the way
"No,you wont research cancer cure, you will research chemicals that make little children wanna buy buldozers , because it favors our ideology" , but not in the way
"you will not peer-review your paper on genetic capitalism, because it favors our ideology"

The 1st example is science with bad priorities.The 2nd is just not science.Lies,propaganda, etc.



If it's a genuine scientific discovery, no problem,if it has been infected with bourgeois ideology from its inception, as has been the case with evolutionary theory, then I think we have a duty to question it.
If it is a genuine scientific discovery, then it is irrelevant which ideology it favors.
If in the process of discovering it, important steps where either meddled with, subjective decisions were made , etc THEN genuine scientific testing process would show that.
Your only hope is a scientific conspiracy, and the road to dissolve it is through science itself.


And what 'ideology' is that, then?
The one that supports that humans are capable of forming a society where altruism cooperation and selflessness is possible.


Well, if that is true of me (if it is), then why can't it be true of Darwin, or Dawkins?
Because they do not affiliate it with ideology.You do, and the bourgeoisie social Darwinists, and instead of you bashing the bourgeoisie Social Darwinists, you are bashing the theory of evolution as ideologically colored!

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Black Sheep:


This proves my point.Engels blames the bourgeoisie for usurping the principle of evolution,applying it to human societies, and claiming its validity from Darwinism.
He criticises an early form of social darwinism.

In fact, he also criticises it applied to the animal kingdom.


No, i'm talking about social animals, where altruism and selfishness have a meaning.

Maybe so, but this can't be explained by 'inclusive fitness'.


Understand the difference between the process itself, and the motivations/goals/usage of the results.If you change the scientific process, then you no longer discover stuff,you are not certain about your findings, etc.

But, there is no such thing as 'the scientific process' (there isn't even anything called 'the scientific method') -- you still seem to think that science floats above humanity and history -- as a sort of disembodied 'process'.


Ideology may affect science in the way
"No,you wont research cancer cure, you will research chemicals that make little children wanna buy buldozers , because it favors our ideology" , but not in the way
"you will not peer-review your paper on genetic capitalism, because it favors our ideology"

The peer review system is fundamentally flawed, and in many ways bolsters the domination of ideology in science.


If it is a genuine scientific discovery, then it is irrelevant which ideology it favors.

On the contrary, if the theory itself is ideologically tainted, then it isn't science to begin with.


Your only hope is a scientific conspiracy, and the road to dissolve it is through science itself

That's like saying the capitalists conspire to concoct their ideology.:lol:

Anyway, conspiracy has nothing to do with anything I have argued here.


The one that supports that humans are capable of forming a society where altruism cooperation and selflessness is possible.

But, that's not my 'ideology'!


Because they do not affiliate it with ideology.

Well, they are mistaken, which is what you'd expect of right-wing theorists, anyway.


You do, and the bourgeoisie social Darwinists, and instead of you bashing the bourgeoisie Social Darwinists, you are bashing the theory of evolution as ideologically colored!

Because it is, as I have shown.

[Black Sheep]

You infuriate me, Rosa.Let's get this matter neatly discussed.
I propose (and would like you to) open a thread in sci & env about this.State clearly your objection and the reason(s) for it.

Also, the multi-quote structure is hard to follow, i recommend numbered list of quotes you address (in one quote bracket), and a numbered response.

If you do, please link me to it.
This is not over, not over by a long shot.
(war cry)

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

BS:


You infuriate me, Rosa.Let's get this matter neatly discussed.

I propose (and would like you to) open a thread in sci & env about this.State clearly your objection and the reason(s) for it.

We're doing a pretty good job here. But, if you disagree, open a new thread yourself.


Also, the multi-quote structure is hard to follow, i recommend numbered list of quotes you address (in one quote bracket), and a numbered response.

I don't find it difficult when others use it.


This is not over, not over by a long shot

Give me your best shot then...:)