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Posted by on Mar 13, 2013 in Skepticism | 9 comments

L’affaire Chagnon (Part 1)

Go Blue!

I’ve been reading Napoleon Chagnon’s new book of late, and trying to puzzle out whether the academic conflicts described therein fit into a larger pattern. For as long as I can remember, there has been an internal conflict within anthropology between those who more strongly emphasize the role of genetics and nature and those who prefer to emphasize the role of environment and culture. Both sides are dismissed by the other as unduly determinist (or worse) presumably in an effort to gain ascendancy for their preferred approach. At the same time, there has been a long-running and heated battle between the psychometricians who believe intelligence is relatively heritable, unitary, and measurable, and their opponents who prefer to think of intelligence as learned, multidimensional, and immeasurable. Then there is also the ongoing debate between those who believe evolutionary psychology is a promising young branch of the biological sciences and those who talk it down as a pseudoscientific gloss on pernicious and outmoded ideas about gender.

After talking to John Horgan about some of these topics last week, I’m coming around to the view that whenever there is an ongoing debate about human nature we are probably going to see a kind of left/right self-assortment, with the people on the right tending towards the view that human nature is somehow fundamental, measurable, and worthy of study, while those on the left are going to focus not on our genetic tendencies but on our memetic constructs, elevating culture over nature. At some point, the people on the right will accuse their opponents of being hippies and blank-slaters, while those on the left will characterize their opposition as furthering a pernicious status quo, or at least hindering the march of progress. Eventually, the situation may devolve into outright character assassination.

I used to think of the nature/nurture conflicts within anthropology and biology as completely separate skirmishes (What have the fiercest of peoples to do with standardized testing methods?) but now I’m beginning to think that perhaps there will always be a split between those believe science should be strongly inflected by progressive political aims and those who remain willing to accept unpalatable truths about human nature as obstacles to be overcome rather than inconvenient truths to be brushed aside.

 And with that last bit, I’ve probably given my position away.

  • http://de-avanzada.blogspot.com/ Daosorios

    I disagree with the idea that one might take sides on this issue depending on the right/left spectrum.

    I’m a leftist, but I’m pretty sure I’d rather take the side of knowledge instead of naturalist myths, like the noble savages’ one.

    • Clayton Flesher

      Just about everyone in these debates is politically left-leaning.

      I’d extend Damion’s analogy to philosophy as well; with the divide between continental and analytic, rationalist and empiricist, and anti- and pro-scientism crowds all lining up similarly. Then again, all three of my examples are gross caracatures of their own.

    • http://de-avanzada.blogspot.com/ Daosorios

      I think these labels have no relevant meaning any longer, at least within the skeptic community.

      There are anti-science conservatives (climate change & evolution) and anti-science liberals (GMOs & Nuclear Energy).

      Likewise, a conservative from a non-western culture is exactly the same as a liberal westerner: they rather the status quo of the savages’ cultures. They’re similar that way. It’s too unaccurate to label someone as right-leaning just because he doesn’t endorse human sacrifices, superstition, rituals and a pre-technological culture.

    • http://skepticink.com/backgroundprobability/ Damion Reinhardt

      When I talk of left/right in this context, I do not mean the quite same thing as political progressives and conservatives and their crazy-quilt big-tent platforms. I refer instead to “two extreme visions of human nature—a Tragic vision that is resigned to its flaws, and a Utopian vision that denies it exists,” which according to Steven Pinker serve to “define the great divide between right-wing and left-wing political ideologies.”

    • http://de-avanzada.blogspot.com/ Daosorios

      Ohh, that. So, where does that put me?!?

    • http://skepticink.com/backgroundprobability/ Damion Reinhardt

      Hopefully, in the middle. It is just a foolish to deny the existence of an innate human nature as it is to resign oneself to the worst of it.

    • http://de-avanzada.blogspot.com/ Daosorios

      Or that could mean we’re above! It seems like a false dichotomy to me.

    • http://skepticink.com/backgroundprobability/ Damion Reinhardt

      All left/right dichotomies (in any field) are mere approximations, useful rules of thumb at best. We should be constantly surprised that they work at all.

  • http://www.facebook.com/hugo.ganca Hugo Gança

    This seems
    to me like a debate over which leg is important for walking: the left or the
    right? How anthropologists can look at pygmies and Massai, see the variation in
    height and not think that a) It just maybe might be genetic and b) perhaps
    there might be other variations in humans, is beyond me. As for behavior, how
    about reading a biology textbook? Spiders building complex webs and birds
    building intricate nest are not a clue that SOME behaviors are genetic? Right,
    it’s ok to say that about any animal that is not Homo sapiens. But people are
    special, dontcha know? (The Bible says so).

    As for the
    nurture/cultural side of things, of course it matters too. The whole point of
    schools and prisons and medals is that to some extent behavior can be modified,
    taught, encouraged and discouraged. To a degree.

    What really
    matters, the software or the hardware? Both!

    (In this
    analogy, the hardware is the genetics, the software the culture side of things;
    given the subject, I felt the need to be extra clear).

    As for the “intelligence”
    issue, both sides seem to lack any. I give you as an example a very smart dog
    and a very dumb human: If intelligence is “immeasurable”, how can you tell
    which is more intelligent? And if you claim to measure intelligence, how smart
    is that dog anyway? What is its I.Q.? You can measure and compare its weight, height,
    strength, speed, and other characteristics to those of a person, why not its intelligence?
    Could it be that your tests are not that good? Could it be that a good and generally
    accepted definition of “intelligence” might be helpful?

    (My point?
    There IS such a thing as “intelligence”, it is related to problem solving and
    as it can be intuitively estimated it should in principle be measurable; it is
    just not being very well (or at all)measured by existing tests).