I wrote:
>>It's a fundamental mistake to talk about what "we're" inclined toward
>>without a discussion of the context (both natural and social) in which we
>>make decisions, especially since that context helps determined exactly
>>what kind of items is we want a "fair share" of. This kind of stuff is
>>just the standard empty talk about unchanging human nature.
Brad writes:
>I think we were both situating ourselves at the primate-group-politics
>level, which is a fine level to visit occasionally when one is thinking
>about deep tendencies that can be reinforced or masked by other layers
>that lie on top of it...
The problem is that not only does our existence reflect our simian past,
but also the vast changes that people have created during the last million
years or so. Evolution led to the creation of critters with large flexible
brains that could be filled with all sorts of different cultural material
(along with bodies that aren't very specialized). Those critters created a
lot of technology and culture, together with social institutions and
revising the natural environment, which filled those big brains. Thus, they
look at the world in a completely different way than did their simian
ancestors. The connection between us and the apes in terms of motivation
and world-view is similar only on the very abstract level, but reality is
much more concrete. No ape would like the New York TIMES or the Taj Mahal,
for example.
Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] & http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
