Re: [xmca] Hedegaard article

[Mike Cole <lchcmike@gmail.com>]

What's the correct way to think about evolution from you point of view,
David?
mike

On Sun, Mar 1, 2009 at 6:39 PM, David Kellogg <vaughndogblack@yahoo.com>wrote:

> Andy:
>
> I'm assuming that "Halime" is a GIRL's name. "Halima" is a girl's name in
> Arabic. I thought that was the whole point; there was a certain conflict
> (precisely over the question of what constitutes a "good life" for a Muslim
> girl) between parents and teachers.
>
> In honor of Darwin's 150th, and the centennial of Origin of Species, I have
> a question about REDUCTIONISM that might be pertinent here.
>
> As is well known, Darwin shares the honor of discovering the basic
> mechanism of evolution with Wallace. But this is a little like saying that
> Vygotsky shares the honor of discovering the basic mechanism of mediation
> with Leontiev.
>
> Darwin (the fox) saw adaptation as only ONE of many mechanisms of evolution
> (though it is true that he saw it as the most important one).This
> position is represented in our own time by the late Stephen J. Gould, who
> has made arguments for exaptation which are very "exaptable" for explaining
> sociocultural APPROPRIATION of the biological endowment of higher primates.
>
> Wallace the hedgehog insisted that adaptation was really the ONLY mechanism
> of evolution. This position is represented in our own time by Richard
> Dawkins, who has argued that bodies are really just "gene-replication
> devices" and their drives are reducible, without remainder, to the selfish
> tendencies of their genes. This is argument is very congenial to
> evolutionary psychology, and in fact has been appropriated by the likes of
> Steven Pinker, Paul Bloom, etc.
>
> It will be seen that the Wallace-Dawkins-Pinker version of evolutionary
> theory is downward reductionist, in much the same way that a psychology
> based on the same analytical unit as behavior (viz. mediated action) has to
> be. It takes the species as the explanandum and offers the gene as the sole
> explanans, just as attempts to explain consciousness as the ideal
> precipitate of "activity" take "action" as the explanandum and offer
> "mediation" as the sole explanans.
>
> The response to this would be that "exaptation" is a wastebasket category
> for everything that isn't be genetically encoded but is still handy to have
> around and that the Darwin-Gould version is handwaving and upward
> reductionist in much the same way that a psychology based entirely on
> concepts such as "the good life" or "institutional conflict" has to be. But
> of course that's not MY response!
>
> David Kellogg
> Seoul National University of Education
>
>
>
>
>
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