-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Prof David West wrote: > in all cases, sensibilities are ethnocentric - there are no cultural > universals! [I will be happy to discuss this with anyone who believes > otherwise.]
Sorry to break off a tangent; but, given that you're willing to discuss the existence of cultural universals, I assume you have a relatively solid method of distinguishing culture from biology. Is that right? If so, what is that method? My current strawman would be the supposed cultural/biological universal that "People don't eat their children." It's not a biological universal because I've heard that some dogs eat their pups and I assume other animals will eat their offspring. Yet I've never heard of any society where humans eat their offspring. Perhaps I'm just ignorant (quite likely since I know very little anthropology) and there is evidence of societies where humans eat their offspring? Or perhaps there's clear biological evidence of an immediate health consequence of eating one's children? If not, that makes it seem like a cultural universal rather than a biological one. I'd also like to avoid equivocation on the word "universal". One _might_ say there are no cultural universals because there simply are no universals, at all, except the ideal ones we find in mathematics. I assume you're not using the word that trivialized way and "within epsilon of universal" can be called "universal". In any case, what I'm _actually_ interested in is the _method_ by which one determines a primarily cultural behavior from a primarily biological behavior. The rest is, as I say, just a strawman to help me clarify. - -- glen e. p. ropella, 971-219-3846, http://tempusdictum.com We must not allow the clock and the calendar to blind us to the fact that each moment of life is a miracle and mystery. -- H. G. Wells -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFH1u57pVJZMHoGoM8RAtbOAKCJhnbUTNe/HW7y1qd2SBblFumNmgCeK6lG mwlvNXZtJNZCDQVvtajmCq4= =yfnP -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
