On Mon, 06 Jun 2005 18:31:34 -0000 "redtwister666" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > Gil, > > I am very leery of the tendency to not make a distinguishing line > between humans and animals. By and large, while it is biologically > true, there is no obvious argument that would allow us to say that > animals reason, have agency or subjectivity, and more importantly > that > animals develop unique socio-cultural forms of social organization > independent of the physical conditions of nature, by which I mean > that > the same geographic regions with relatively stable physical > conditions > of nature, have given rise to and sustained many, many diverse > socio-cultural formations that are the product of human practice. I > think that Lewontin's point that culture is the negation of nature > (Biology as Ideology) is pretty apropos. > > Kenan Malik, a British biologist and Marxist, has some interesting > material. I am listing only two essays below. > > http://www.kenanmalik.com/essays/fallacy.html > http://www.kenanmalik.com/essays/singer_debate.html
I would largely agree with Malik's first essay concerning evolutionary psychology, which is largely a repackaging of the sociobiology of the 1970s and 1980s. Concerning the debate between Singer and Malik, I cannot help thinking that Singer had the better of the argument, since his point is that any argument that would justify the denial of rights or basic protections to the great apes, would if taken to its logical conclusion, justify the denial of rights or protections to significant number of human beings. Malik's strongest point was his argument that human rights inhere to us by virtue of our membership in a moral community and so do not necessary depend on us individually possessing specific characteristics A, B, or C. Thus, even those humans who are severely retarded or handicapped and so may be lacking in the abilities required for exercising rationality or moral agency, would still be entitled to rights by virtue of their membership in the human moral community. I suspect that Singer might reply that the boundaries of the moral community may be more flexible than Malik imagines, and that it may well in the future be able to encompass non-human creatures like the great apes, as well as members of homo sapiens. > > Steven Rose also had a good essay some years ago in International > Socialism on "Animal Rights" along these lines. > > For me personally, this reduction of humans to mere animals is the > line of thought running from Nietzsche to the dominant > anti-humanisms > of today and is a very reactionary trend. Reactionary thought is contradictory on this point. On the one hand we have those reactionaries who under the influence of traditional religion regard humans as supernatural beings, created in God's image and endowed with immortal souls. The achievement of freedom and equality in this world is not so important because the really important thing is to achieve salvation in the next life. At the same time there are other reactionaries, who apparently rejecting supernaturalism, regard humans as nothing more than animals, and so are not inherently entitled to treatment any better than what we given to members of other species. These two varieties of reactionary thought stem from different and contradictory premises, yet in practice they reach similar conclusions concerning how people ought to be treated. Presumably, we progressives want to assert that human beings are a part of nature, who evolved from non-human ancestry by natural selection. We would want to make the argument, that while humans are animals, they are distinguished from other species by virtue of our development of culture, and following Engels, we would want to argue that the key to the development of distinctively human culture is labor. That indeed it is labor that made it possible for non-human primates to eventually become human. > > On learning language, there is an extensive debate. IMO, Greg is > not > on strong ground here in that Chomsky's argument for a UG that is a > part of the human brain structurally is not exactly undisputed, to > put > it mildly, either within linguistics or within neuroscience. For > example, from a neurobiological point of view, where is this > "module" > (Fodor's work in neurobiology on the idea that the brain is modular > is > considered by many people, including Chomsky, the science backing > the > theory)? Brains are funny things and one of the things we know from > brain trauma victims is that when one area of the brain is damaged, > in > many cases, other areas of the brain take over the functions. There > is also the problem that the brain does not function in such a > compartmentalized fashion, as far as we can tell. There certainly > seem to be areas that are normally associated with a certain > function, > but even in those instances, those areas work with other parts of > the > brain to produce the whole function. Taken together, this is a > genuine problem for a "language organ." > > This is not to rule Chomsky out, but it is a funny thing the > relationship between Primary Language Acquisition and Secondary > Language Acquisition. SLA is much harder to explain via UG, it is > much less helpful. Vygotskyian linguistics is making a strong > challenge to UG in this area. Keep in mind, there are also attempts > to fuse the two which seem interesting. And I wouldn't even rule out approaches like Skinner's operant analysis of verbal behavior. I am sure most people here realize that the one publication that first put Chomsky on the academic map, nearly fifty years ago, was his famous review, bashing Skinner's *Verbal Behavior*. And yet an argument can be made that the methods developed by Skinner and his disciples have turned out more practical applications in areas like rehabilitative therapy than Chomsky's psycholinguistics. And yes, just as there are attempts to synthesize Chomsky with Vygotsky, so there have been attempts to synthesize Chomsky with Skinner. Perhaps what is required, is the synthesis of Chomsky with Skinner, with Vygotsky. > Tahir is much more up to > date > on these matters than I am, though I am diving into the relevant > materials. I believe Tahir's three main arguments with Chomsky go > as > follows: > > "Chomsky's approach could be called scientistic rather than > scientific, due to its extreme formalism. Chomsky made many claims > for > language that have turned out to be unprovable (e.g. the existence > of > a 'language organ' of the mind). > Secondly, Chomsky's linguistics have turned out to be utterly > inapplicable to any real world problems. > Thirdly, can you describe a research programme that follows from > this > linguistics, other than "introspection", that is?" > > What Vygotsky does not seem to grapple with well is individual > capacity for learning a language and this has been Chomsky's strong > point. Of course that would also be Skinner's strong suit too. > That is part of the reason for some attempts to merge > Vygotsky > and UG. So while I am very suspiscious of Chomsky's UG, it may > nonetheless be usefulat some carefully circumscribed level. > > IMO, while I think that there are some clearly shared concepts > between > Pinker and Chomsky, Chomsky has been quite critical of evolutionary > psychology and it is not clear that evolutionary psychology is any > more valid than sociobiology. In fact, it is really an extension of > it. Chomsky does not believe that the emergence of human linguistic ability can be explained in terms of natural selection. Interestingly enough, Stephen Jay Gould endorsed Chomsky's position on this question, suggesting that human linguistic capacity may be a prime example of what he called a spandrel. Pinker on the other hand disagrees. While he endorses most of Chomskyian psycholinguistics, he takes issue with Chomsky's contention that the evolution of human linguistic capacity cannot be understood in terms of natural selection. A large part of Pinker's work on linguistics has been concerned with showing that the principle of Darwinian biology, and indeed the principles of evolutionary psychology can be applied to psycholinguistics. > The Darwin Wars has an interesting discussion of this and also > of > memes, on which I agree with Ralph that it sounds like nonsense to > me. That depends on what aspect of memetics you're talking about. The notion of a meme, in of itself, seems poorly defined. On the other hand, there seems to be much to be said for the broader point that selectionism, as a mode of explanation, can be extended from evolutionary biology to the behavioral and social sciences, IMO. > _______________________________________________ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
