Hi Dominic
I wholly respect your right to be a hardnosed realist among the fluffy
idealists. But perhaps this reaction is in part because "humanities" people
are more likely to come across the idea of "hardwiring" in its populist
manifestations than in serious scientific argument. I don't have a problem
with the idea per se (I don't argue with genetics or sexual difference):
what I do have a problem with is how these things are applied, and the
application and interpretation of knowledge is, I'm sure you would agree, a
complex and very often socially inflected activity. It's one thing to say
that there is such a things as a "male" and "female" brain; it is quite
another to extrapolate from that that women can't read maps and men are
incapable of washing up, and to write repulsive books like Men Are From
Mars, Women Are From Venus. And there was, remember, that notorious book
which claimed that men were genetically "hardwired" to rape, roundly
condemned as bad science and bad reading of data by scientists.
Culture vultures might feel insecure if they have the need to have some
Godlike objective "reason" for being. However, if they feel that virtue is
its own reward, they can put that bother aside.
All the best
A
On 16/2/05 9:40 PM, "Dominic Fox" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> It seems to me that "hard-wiring" is a taboo concept among
> "humanities" people: mention of the notion always seems to excite a
> stronger reaction than it merits.
>
> I would suggest that "humanities" people systematically overrate the
> power of culture, not only because they esteem cultural activities
> very highly, but also because they have a nagging fear that the value
> of culture is in fact rather insecure, that there are other,
> implacably malevolent, forces that threaten to devalue it. The trouble
> is that it is difficult to say what the foundations of cultural value
> are. The worry is that they may fall under suspicion of circularity:
> culture determines the value of culture, according to criteria that
> are not easily demonstrated not to be arbitrary. What makes an
> "expert" in the arts an expert?
>
> There is among scientists a good deal of debate about the degree and
> nature of the "hard-wiring" of behavioural/psychological traits in
> human and other animals, and I shouldn't imagine that there are many
> scientists who wouldn't lament or at least want to qualify the term
> itself. Still, they seem to think it's worth debating. But it's true
> that "hard-wiring" seems an odd way to talk about traits and
> predispositions that, even if indisputably present, would by virtue of
> the complexity of the systems in which they were embedded be subject
> to very considerable variations in expression. Human beings are
> fortunately very good at thwarting, diverting or inverting their
> instincts. However, this aptitude would be of no account if we didn't
> have instincts to thwart, divert and invert.
>
> Many of the objections people raise to the idea that human brains can
> be relatively "male" or "female" seem to me to be based on a wilful
> refusal to understand the meaning of statistics. Mind you, that is
> also true of much of the excitement other people seem to have about
> the same idea.
>
> Dominic
Alison Croggon
Blog: http://theatrenotes.blogspot.com
Editor, Masthead: http://masthead.net.au
Home page: http://alisoncroggon.com
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