carnes@gargoyle.UChicago.UUCP (Richard Carnes) (06/22/85)
[Follow-ups should probably go to net.philosophy.] In his interesting article, Eric Roskos writes: >Why can't I as easily define "monogamy" in geese, let us say, as being the >same cultural phenomenon as "monogamy" in humans? How do you define culture, >other than your current definition as "a peculiarly human institution"? I >would define culture to be "a behavior or custom practiced, by convention, >by a group of like organisms." Although "culture" is a notoriously ambiguous term, animal ethologists do not, as far as I am aware, apply the term to animals. Now, you can apply the term "monogamy" to geese as long as it is understood that it cannot be applied in the anthropological sense. "Monogamy" as applied to humans means the practice or state of being married to one person at a time. Animals don't get married. If you're still not convinced that animals don't possess the institution of marriage or any other cultural forms, the best I can do is quote from Marshall Sahlins's excellent (but tough) book *The Use and Abuse of Biology: An Anthropological Critique of Sociobiology* (pp. 61ff.): _________________ The final, most fundamental conclusion must be that culture is the indispensable condition of this system of human organization and reproduction, with all its surprises for the biogenetic theory of social behavior. Human society is cultural, unique in virtue of its construction by symbolic means. E. O. Wilson says, "the highest form of tradition, by whatever criterion we choose to judge it, is of course human culture. But culture, aside from its involvement with language, which is truly unique, differs from animal tradition only in degree" (1975, p. 168). Literally, the statement is correct. If we were to disregard language, culture would differ from animal tradition only in degree. But precisely because of this "involvement with language" -- a phrase hardly befitting serious scientific discourse -- cultural social life differs from the animal in kind. It is not just the expression of an animal of another kind. The reason why human social behavior is not organized by the individual maximization of genetic interest is that human beings are not socially defined by their organic qualities but in terms of symbolic attributes; and a symbol is precisely a meaningful value -- such as "close kinship" or "shared blood" -- which cannot be determined by the physical properties of that to which it refers. Wilson pays lip service (if one may so put it) to this famous "arbitrary character of the sign." But for him the theoretical importance of human speech lies in its FUNCTION OF COMMUNICATION rather than its STRUCTURE OF SIGNIFICATION, so it is primarily understood to CONVEY INFORMATION rather than to GENERATE MEANING. As communication, language is not distinguishable from the class of animal signaling, it only adds (quantitatively) to the capacity to signal. What is signaled is information.... So far as its concept or meaning is concerned, a word is not simply referrable to external stimuli but first of all to its place in the system of language and culture, in brief to its OWN environment of related words.... I am making no more claim for culture relative to biology than biology would assert relative to physics and chemistry.... The same kind of hierarchical relationship holds for culture vis-a-vis biology.... Culture is biology plus the symbolic faculty. If we were to ask how a given system of kinship, chieftanship, or religious beliefs acquired its properties, we would have to have a theory of symbolic attribution. [end of quote from Sahlins] _____________ >... you are claiming that humans magically have >some set of properties no other animal has, rather than just incrementally >having MORE of some property. You can safely argue this from a religious >standpoint, but not from a biological one, given existing evidence. I think most biologists would agree that only humans possess a symbolic faculty, i.e. a capacity for language, and that this claim can be made quite apart from theology or metaphysics. Humans are animals all right, but animals with a BIG DIFFERENCE in KIND: only humans can create the structure of meanings attached to symbols known as "culture." >For >example, the fire ants we have here in Florida attack an ant hill, kill the >queen, take the ant hill over, and make the workers work for them. How is >that different from some people going to a country, killing its ruler, >and making the people work for them? Do you mean to suggest that, mutatis mutandis, there is NO difference? There are enormous differences. The ant queen isn't a ruler in even a metaphorical sense. Human warfare takes place in a political (and thus a cultural) context. Consider the aggression of Nazi Germany or the wars chronicled by Herodotus and Thucydides. The individual soldiers fought because they were conscripted or enslaved or paid good wages or because they were motivated by patriotism or other ideals. The political leaders who conducted the wars were motivated by the ideology of Lebensraum for Aryans or the ideals expressed in Pericles's funeral oration or the Realpolitik of the Melian Dialogue or the intention of exacting just vengeance for a grievance or any number of other reasons. Nothing remotely like this occurs in ant societies. Is anyone prepared to claim that ants possess a political life? It is potentially quite misleading to apply ethnographic terms such as slavery, marriage, monarchy, warfare, etc. to animals. These terms can be correctly applied to animals by metaphor *only*, because their meanings imply a culturally constituted world of meanings that is possessed by the human species alone. As Lewontin et al. write in *Not In Our Genes*, "...`slavery' does not exist in ants. Slavery is a form of production of economic surplus, and slaves are a form of capital. Ants know neither commodities nor capital investment nor rates of interest nor the relative advantage to industrial capital of a free labor market." Lewontin et al. draw a political moral, with which I concur: "E. O. Wilson has identified himself with American neoconservative libertarianism, which holds that society is best served by each individual acting in a self-serving manner, limited only in the case of extreme harm to others. Sociobiology is yet another attempt to put a natural-scientific foundation under Adam Smith. It combines vulgar Mendelism, vulgar Darwinism, and vulgar reductionism in the service of the status quo." In summary, "we used to be apes" is not a sufficient answer to the question "What are human beings?" [ I wish I had time to pursue this discussion further, but I probably won't, at least for a few weeks. ] Richard Carnes, ihnp4!gargoyle!carnes
jer@peora.UUCP (J. Eric Roskos) (06/25/85)
I wish you had not redirected this comment to net.philosophy, since I don't
have time to read that newsgroup, and thus won't see your further comments.
I will certainly agree with your continuing the approach of DEFINING "culture"
as uniquely human.
But you must realize that this is not my point. Rather, we have earlier had
assertions by people that "human beings make mate selections based, in part,
on criteria involving `selecting someone best adapted to defending the
family,'" etc. My argument is simply that it is reasonable to say that some
elements of human behavior are derived from these more primitive origins.
My argument for "culture" in geese and ants was not to say that we should
actually call these "culture". Rather, it was to say that you can't attempt
to invalidate my original claim simply by saying
1) People don't act in ways derived from animal behavior because
human behavior is cultural.
2) "Cultural behavior" is behavior that is uniquely human.
This is circular reasoning. That was my point: I can as easily DEFINE
culture to support my position.
Now, you, on the other hand, argue that people's behavior has a "symbolic"
element, derived from language, which is unique to humans. [At least, I
think that was your reasoning. I find it singularly difficult, I must
confess, to read sociological writing. Perhaps I am just not familiar
with the terminology.] I will partially agree with that. For example, if
a woman is made to wear a large red letter "A" because she was unfaithful
to her husband, I will agree entirely that that is a culturally imposed
behavior. I will not entirely agree that only humans act symbolically;
animal behavior is full of symbolism too, and it is very difficult to argue
conclusively exactly why it works that way. For example, in certain dog
packs the dominant dog holds his tail upright, whereas all others don't.
It is hard to argue whether he does that out of some genetically-derived
behavior, or because non-dominant dogs that hold their tails erect are
attacked by the dominant dog because the dominant dog feels it is a symbolic
challenge of his dominance.
But that is beside the point. The question here is simply (at least from
my viewpoint) "Do humans sometimes behave in ways that are NOT culturally
acquired?" What about smiling, for example? I continue to feel that
there are human behaviors that are NOT "cultural".
--
Shyy-Anzr: J. Eric Roskos
UUCP: ..!{decvax,ucbvax,ihnp4}!vax135!petsd!peora!jer
US Mail: MS 795; Perkin-Elmer SDC;
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"Erny vfgf qba'g hfr Xbqnpuebzr."mrh@cybvax0.UUCP (Mike Huybensz) (06/25/85)
In article <499@gargoyle.UChicago.UUCP> carnes@gargoyle.UChicago.UUCP (Richard Carnes) writes: > > In his interesting article, Eric Roskos writes: > > >Why can't I as easily define "monogamy" in geese, let us say, as being the > >same cultural phenomenon as "monogamy" in humans? There is actually a very simple answer. Monogamy in geese is analogous to monogamy in humans, but not homologous. If geese can be said to have culture, it too would be analogous. What does this distinction mean? It means that monogamy and (possibly) culture arose separately in humans and geese, rather than from a common ancestor which posessed those characteristics. It means that because these characteristics which resemble each other arose from different sources, we can probably find traces (which may be very significant) of those different sources, and that generalizations of similarity between human and goose monogamy might likely fail in a wide array of specifics. > ... quote from Marshall Sahlins's excellent (but tough) book *The > Use and Abuse of Biology: An Anthropological Critique of > Sociobiology* (pp. 61ff.): > _________________ > > The final, most fundamental conclusion must be that culture is the > indispensable condition of this system of human organization and > reproduction, with all its surprises for the biogenetic theory of > social behavior. Human society is cultural, unique in virtue of its > construction by symbolic means. E. O. Wilson says, "the highest form > of tradition, by whatever criterion we choose to judge it, is of > course human culture. But culture, aside from its involvement with > language, which is truly unique, differs from animal tradition only > in degree" (1975, p. 168). Literally, the statement is correct. If > we were to disregard language, culture would differ from animal > tradition only in degree. But precisely because of this "involvement > with language" -- a phrase hardly befitting serious scientific > discourse -- cultural social life differs from the animal in kind. Here Sahlin apparently wants to draw a theological line between man and animals. Is it appropriate to accuse him of anthropocentrism? (I'm trying to summarize his argument as I go, because it is written in a difficult style with unnecessarily lengthy and complicated sentences. If he only wrote as clearly as Wilson....) > It is not just the expression of an animal of another kind. The reason > why human social behavior is not organized by the individual > maximization of genetic interest is that human beings are not > socially defined by their organic qualities but in terms of symbolic > attributes; and a symbol is precisely a meaningful value -- such as > "close kinship" or "shared blood" -- which cannot be determined by > the physical properties of that to which it refers. Here is a massive non-sequiteur: while language may require symbols, the fact that other organisms don't have something we recognize as language doesn't rule out their use of symbols internally or in a coded form that we have yet to recognize. > Wilson pays lip service (if one may so put it) to this famous > "arbitrary character of the sign." But for him the theoretical > importance of human speech lies in its FUNCTION OF COMMUNICATION > rather than its STRUCTURE OF SIGNIFICATION, so it is primarily > understood to CONVEY INFORMATION rather than to GENERATE MEANING. As > communication, language is not distinguishable from the class of > animal signaling, it only adds (quantitatively) to the capacity to > signal. What is signaled is information.... So far as its concept or > meaning is concerned, a word is not simply referrable to external > stimuli but first of all to its place in the system of language and > culture, in brief to its OWN environment of related words.... Yet another gruesome error: the assumption that words and language are only source of meaning, rather than mere projections of it. We don't know yet where the meaning of "hot" comes from, for example. Is it because we have hardwired heat receptors connected to the language centers of our brain? Undoubtedly language provides some generation of meaning, if only through mechanical inference or other generation of possibly valid meanings. But how much of what we call culture relies on mechanisms other than language which we share in common with other species? > I am making no more claim for culture relative to biology than > biology would assert relative to physics and chemistry.... The same > kind of hierarchical relationship holds for culture vis-a-vis > biology.... Culture is biology plus the symbolic faculty. If we were > to ask how a given system of kinship, chieftanship, or religious > beliefs acquired its properties, we would have to have a theory of > symbolic attribution. [end of quote from Sahlins] > _____________ Here is the most blatant fallacy yet: that there is a hierarchy of discrete levels rather a continuum of nature where we give discrete labels to portions of knowledge bounded by ignorance. Just as physics and chemistry and biology have grown together over the deacades so that now we can hardly distinguish where one starts and the other leaves off, so culture and biology are meeting through sociobiology. > >... you are claiming that humans magically have > >some set of properties no other animal has, rather than just incrementally > >having MORE of some property. You can safely argue this from a religious > >standpoint, but not from a biological one, given existing evidence. > > I think most biologists would agree that only humans possess a > symbolic faculty, i.e. a capacity for language, and that this claim > can be made quite apart from theology or metaphysics. Humans are > animals all right, but animals with a BIG DIFFERENCE in KIND: only > humans can create the structure of meanings attached to symbols > known as "culture." Human language is quite distinct from anything other animals have: the nature of the distinction is the question that needs more research. It is quite possible that we will determine that chimps do have a precursor language ability that is only quantitatively different than ours. There is also no doubt that our extensive use of langauge provides emergent characteristics which are not homologous with anything else in the natural world. However, claiming a difference in kind then gives us no reason to look for the homologies that might exists between our culture/sociology/ whatever and those of other animals. Just as claiming separate creation would give us no reason to study animal anatomy and physiology to learn about our own. > >For > >example, the fire ants we have here in Florida attack an ant hill, kill the > >queen, take the ant hill over, and make the workers work for them. How is > >that different from some people going to a country, killing its ruler, > >and making the people work for them? These are quite different from the standpoint that ant and human wars are not homologous. Even as analogies, they are weak. The family organization and the mechanism of enslavement are entirely different. > Do you mean to suggest that, mutatis mutandis, there is NO > difference? There are enormous differences. The ant queen isn't a > ruler in even a metaphorical sense. Human warfare takes place in a > political (and thus a cultural) context. Consider the aggression of > Nazi Germany or the wars chronicled by Herodotus and Thucydides. The > individual soldiers fought because they were conscripted or enslaved > or paid good wages or because they were motivated by patriotism or > other ideals. The political leaders who conducted the wars were > motivated by the ideology of Lebensraum for Aryans or the ideals > expressed in Pericles's funeral oration or the Realpolitik of the > Melian Dialogue or the intention of exacting just vengeance for a > grievance or any number of other reasons. Nothing remotely like this > occurs in ant societies. Is anyone prepared to claim that ants > possess a political life? These are valid differences between ant and human wars. However, there are also valid similarities, concerning strategy for acquiring reproductive resources, such as slaves. For example, a female human slave can represent greater reproductive capacity for her captor/owner/whatever by widening the bottleneck for human males: number of mates. An enslaved worker ant can represent greater reproductive capacity for a queen ant (and by kin selection, her daughters the workers) by widening the bottleneck for queen ants: number of workers to feed larvae (and perform otehr colony tasks.) > It is potentially quite misleading to apply ethnographic terms such > as slavery, marriage, monarchy, warfare, etc. to animals. These > terms can be correctly applied to animals by metaphor *only*, because > their meanings imply a culturally constituted world of meanings that > is possessed by the human species alone. Partly correct. The important terms are analogy and homology. The examples you provide are appropriate, but there is no reason why we cannot create a terminology that describes homologies between human and animal behavior/culture just as we have similar terminologies for anatomy. Some of our behavior may prove to be homologous to that of animals, in which case it may not be in the least inaccurate to describe them in common human terms such as "hot" or "pain". > As Lewontin et al. write in > *Not In Our Genes*, "...`slavery' does not exist in ants. Slavery is > a form of production of economic surplus, and slaves are a form of > capital. Ants know neither commodities nor capital investment nor > rates of interest nor the relative advantage to industrial capital of > a free labor market." A typical example of Lewontin's semantic obfuscation. An enslaved worker ant produces a net surplus of labor for production of offspring of the enslaving colony. Whether or not the ants use symbols to describe it. > Lewontin et al. draw a political moral, with which I concur: "E. O. > Wilson has identified himself with American neoconservative > libertarianism, which holds that society is best served by each > individual acting in a self-serving manner, limited only in the case > of extreme harm to others. Sociobiology is yet another attempt to > put a natural-scientific foundation under Adam Smith. It combines > vulgar Mendelism, vulgar Darwinism, and vulgar reductionism in the > service of the status quo." To the degree that Lewontin draws political morals, he is not a scientist, but merely a politician with an axe to grind. I've met and talked with Lewontin, with Wilson, and with many who know them. I think that on the subject of sociobiology, he's little better than Lysenko. (Though his own research, and that of his students is superb.) > In summary, "we used to be apes" is not a sufficient answer to the > question "What are human beings?" Indubitably true: yet in many ways we are still apes, and mammals, and vertebrates, and multicellular eucaryotes. This in no way implies that all of what we call culture, language, and sociology are solely the human province. -- Mike Huybensz ...decvax!genrad!mit-eddie!cybvax0!mrh