Jim, I was responding to the common ideological misinterpretation of the "selfish-gene," its use as justification for the venal political economy so much the heart and soul of capitalism.
-----Original Message----- >From: Jim Devine <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >Sent: May 31, 2007 11:30 AM >To: [email protected] >Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Altruism: hardwired > >On 5/30/07, sartesian wrote: >> Nothing new there. Used to be called social darwinism, then >> socio-biology; now social molecular biology. >> >> Same old, same old eugenics. Pseudo-science. > >"Eugenics" refers to selective breeding of humans (as in the US in the >1920s & 1930s, or in Nazi Germany). > >I don't think so. "Social Darwinism" is nothing but old fashioned >_laissez faire_ with a secular version of the old Calvinist twist >("we're better because we're winners"). > >Sociobiology represents a failed (and silly) effort to explain human >social behavior by analogies with bees and other social creatures. > >"Social molecular biology" isn't really what the cited article is >about. The article simply says that are brains are "wired" so that we >get pleasure from empathetic behavior. Empathy isn't morality: my >buddy and I can feel really empathetic with each other at the same >time that we torture someone. (In the classic Milgram experiment, the >subject empathizes with an authority figure and follows orders to >torture a third person.) Morality, by its very nature, is social. > >The first three are disgusting ideologies, while the fourth seems a >potential blow against the commonly-accepted view that people are >simply greedy bastards who look out only for themselves. >-- >Jim Devine / "Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti." (Go your >own way and let people talk.) -- Karl, paraphrasing Dante.
