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From: jer@peora.UUCP (J. Eric Roskos)
Newsgroups: net.philosophy
Subject: Re: Intelligence (sociobiology: are humans clever ants?)
Message-ID: <1151@peora.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 25-Jun-85 09:57:15 EDT
Article-I.D.: peora.1151
Posted: Tue Jun 25 09:57:15 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 26-Jun-85 07:17:21 EDT
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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".
-- 
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