-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Prof David West wrote: > Major distraction prevented replying sooner.
That's the beauty of e-mail! > "No cultural universals" is the antidote to the disease of ethnocentrism Aha! I hadn't thought of that, at all. So, regardless of the finer points about "universal", abstraction, and such, the proposition "There are no cultural universals" serves as a kind of dialectical tool to pop the audience out of any ethnocentric paradigm they might be in when they first hear it. And, of course, that proposition (neither true nor false, really) would continue to help refine rationale throughout one's research. Very cool. > necro-cannabilism - there is no category change involved at all. In > necro-cannabalism, in fact lineage is acknowledged and serves to set > priorities - I get to consume the remains of my parents and children > before the rest of the band gets their share. Would you mind citing an example of a culture that engaged in necro-cannabalism that acknowledges lineage? I had no idea such cultures existed. Or, if info is plentiful, is "necro-cannabalism" the primary key word? > are made - in the form of "all cultures abhor murder." To deny cultural > universals in this context is simply stating that in the areas of world > view, values, norms, beliefs, and language there is no more universality > across cultures in the abstract than there is in the concrete. Even if > there appears to be syntactic commonality (all cultures believe in the > supernatural) there is not semantic consistency, each culture "means" > something different for the same syntactic expression. I get the point, here, about the grounding changing between any two cultures. However, it's one thing to say that the semantic grounding _changes_, which is a weak argument for locality. It's much stronger to say that, when the semantic grounding changes from one culture to the next, there are no semantic _mappings_ between the two groundings that allow an invariant across any of those mappings. I.e. just because the semantic grounding changes doesn't mean it completely changes. There can be (and are, I suspect) some invariants when mapping the semantic groundings between any _two_ cultures. And I suspect there are invariants when those mappings are applied. That would mean that given any _two_ cultures, there are some identifiable universals (over the set of two). But as we increase the size of the set from two to three to N, the number of those invariants shrinks, perhaps quite rapidly. So, the weak form of "There are no cultural universals" simply acknowledges the uncertainty between any quantification over the set of cultures. But a strong form would precisely specify the quantification (over _all_ cultures, given any 10 cultures, given any 2 cultures, etc.) and it would reserve the word "universal" for "over all cultures". But that would be an idealization or limit process because we're too ignorant of _all_ cultures (I suspect). Is there such a strong argument out there? Do we have some idea of how rapidly invariants fade as the number of cultures is increased? And if the number of invariants stays _pretty_ high over most (almost all) cultures and only collapses after some of the more bizarre cultures are added, then it's reasonable to say that there _are_ some practical (not ideal or theoretical) cultural "universals" (or "almost universals"). > Sometimes it takes time to sort this issue out. Biology has only > recently started to provide the evidence that suggests "hardwired" > causes/origins for common supernatural experiences - neuro-theology. > The supposed "cultural" notions of beauty and sexual attractiveness have > been shown to originate in biological universals like bilateral > symmetry, and the ability to "smell" each other's immune systems. > > Some of the most interesting, and unresolved, data is found in very > basic phenomenon. For example, color perception / color terms in > language. Cultures have 2 - n color terms in their language: > If they have exactly two terms they are always black and white (or > equivalents like, warm and cold) > If they have exactly three terms, the third term is always red - (B > / W / R) > If they have exactly four terms, the fourth is always green - (B / > W / R / G) > Five, the fifth is always brown - (B / W / R / G / Br) > Six, purple - (B / W / R / G / Br / P) > Seven, plus, no pattern. > In the cases 1-6 terms, why the commonality? Biology in the form of > occular perception? Unlikely. Natural Law? Possible, but > unsatisfactory. Culture? Unlikely. But doesn't rationale like this lead one to think that "culture" is, itself, just a convenient packaging of biology? I.e. all culture probably reduces to biology, we're just too ignorant to know _how_? - -- glen e. p. ropella, 971-219-3846, http://tempusdictum.com The world henceforth will be run by synthesizers, people able to put together the right information at the right time, think critically about it, and make important choices. - E.O. Wilson -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFH4AjSpVJZMHoGoM8RAq+2AJ9tq50KcXv5ZwClA0EXV0/yjEduCwCgnkyx yQqZvPLaxygKf944RfpmA3Y= =ftbJ -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
