questions continued - reply to glen

[Prof David West]

Major distraction prevented replying sooner.


On Tue, 11 Mar 2008 16:22:08 -0700, "glen e. p. ropella"
<gepr at tempusdictum.com> said:
>
>

I pretty much agree with your comments about cultural universals, at
least in so far as the term is intended to be used scientifically.

Putting on my Wittgenstein (and postmodern deconstructivist) hat for a
moment, the concept of a "cultural universal" is far more important in
the philosopho-politico-moral language game than in the scientific
language game.

"No cultural universals" is the antidote to the disease of ethnocentrism
and a slogan supporting the prime directive of cultural relativity.
Most specifically, the phrase, is the counter to the advocacy of
"natural law" and similar philosophical positions.

Whenever an assertion is made of the sort, "no parents kill their own
children, because 'mother love' is a natural law," the anthropologist
counters with an example of a (usually more than one) culture that does
precisely that.  In this context, the abstraction vs. particulars of
expression is precisely the point, because the particulars refute the
abstraction - technically both abstractions, natural law and cultural
universal.

When it comes to eating children / your own children without changing
their type category - sacrifice is probably not a good example.  I have
a recollection from college days, that societies that practiced
cannabalism for survival, food was food without regard to parentage.
You could make the same argument here - i.e. a category change from
"child" to "food" - but it would be less compelling than than in the
sacrifice example.  In societies that practice ritual cannabalism and
necro-cannabilism - there is no category change involved at all.  In
necro-cannabalism, in fact lineage is acknowledged and serves to set
priorities - I get to consume the remains of my parents and children
before the rest of the band gets their share.

>
> So, is that all you mean by "there are no cultural universals"?  All you
> mean is that cultural universals are always too abstract and can be
> picked apart and shown to be (somewhat) local as they are applied and
> made concrete?

Yes, in a sense - but this admission is less than it seems.  The domain
of anthropology involves investigation of the abstract (world view,
values, norms, beliefs, language) and the concrete (behavior, dress) and
mixtures of both (kinship, ritual).  When it comes to the concrete and
mixed elements of culture, no one asserts universals - they would be
patently false.  It is only in the area of the abstract that such claims
are made - in the form of "all cultures abhor murder."  To deny cultural
universals in this context is simply stating that in the areas of world
view, values, norms, beliefs, and language there is no more universality
across cultures in the abstract than there is in the concrete.  Even if
there appears to be syntactic commonality (all cultures believe in the
supernatural) there is not semantic consistency, each culture "means"
something different for the same syntactic expression.


> Given that we have no predicate for biological vs. cultural, this seems
> a bit sloppy on the part of the anthropologists.  Not because of the
> ambiguity in "cause", but because of the circular rhetoric of holding
> all 3 premises simultaneously: 1) there are no cultural universals, 2)
> if a cultural universal is apparent, it's likely biological, and 3)
> there is no predicate to distinguish cultural vs. biological.

It is not that there is no predicate, it is a case of insufficient
evidence to decide how to apply the predicate.  Anthropologists, like
Biologists, have a very clear idea of what belongs in and out of their
discipline coupled with a whole lot of things that might go one way or
the other depending on the results of future research.

If empirical data seems to suggest that a particular abstraction or
concrete aspect of culture seems to be present in all cultures, the
default assumption is the the commonality has a biological cause/origin.
 A corollary to this default - in cases where both an abstraction and a
biological potential cause for the commonality, the biological is
presumed to be the more reasonable explanation.  (For example the
Yanomami assertion that they are violent because there is a shortage of
women - cultural explanation; juxtaposed with the assertion that the
Yanomami are violent because there is a shortage of protein in their
environment - biological explanation; the latter is presumed to be more
reasonable.)

Sometimes it takes time to sort this issue out.  Biology has only
recently started to provide the evidence that suggests "hardwired"
causes/origins for common supernatural experiences - neuro-theology.
The supposed "cultural" notions of beauty and sexual attractiveness have
been shown to originate in biological universals like bilateral
symmetry, and the ability to "smell" each other's immune systems.

Some of the most interesting, and unresolved, data is found in very
basic phenomenon.  For example, color perception / color terms in
language.  Cultures have 2 - n color terms in their language:
     If they have exactly two terms they are always black and white (or
     equivalents like, warm and cold)
     If they have exactly three terms, the third term is always red - (B
     / W / R)
     If they have exactly four terms, the fourth is always green - (B /
     W / R / G)
     Five, the fifth is always brown - (B / W / R / G / Br)
     Six, purple - (B / W / R / G / Br / P)
     Seven, plus, no pattern.
In the cases 1-6 terms, why the commonality?  Biology in the form of
occular perception? Unlikely.  Natural Law? Possible, but
unsatisfactory.  Culture? Unlikely.


davew

   

> - --
> glen e. p. ropella, 971-219-3846, http://tempusdictum.com
> I don't know why we are here, but I'm pretty sure that it is not in
> order to enjoy ourselves. -- Ludwig Wittgenstein
>
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
> Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (GNU/Linux)
> Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org
>
> iD8DBQFH1xQgpVJZMHoGoM8RArcsAJ9fIvHs8uGga98snKX+eitWtlwMmACffqJa
> ULuvgdH1LKA3vZbpKHfU3Jc=
> =rKPk
> -----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

[Russell Standish]

On Sun, Mar 16, 2008 at 02:06:40PM -0400, Prof David West wrote:

>
> Some of the most interesting, and unresolved, data is found in very
> basic phenomenon.  For example, color perception / color terms in
> language.  Cultures have 2 - n color terms in their language:
>      If they have exactly two terms they are always black and white (or
>      equivalents like, warm and cold)
>      If they have exactly three terms, the third term is always red - (B
>      / W / R)
>      If they have exactly four terms, the fourth is always green - (B /
>      W / R / G)
>      Five, the fifth is always brown - (B / W / R / G / Br)
>      Six, purple - (B / W / R / G / Br / P)
>      Seven, plus, no pattern.
> In the cases 1-6 terms, why the commonality?  Biology in the form of
> occular perception? Unlikely.  Natural Law? Possible, but
> unsatisfactory.  Culture? Unlikely.
>
>
> davew

How many languages have just five or six terms? If only one, or are
all closely related, there's your answer.

There are physical explanations why red and green are the first couple
- they are primary colours, and are also the colours of haemoglobin
and chlorophyl, which are widely available pigments. Blue/Purple are
pretty rare pigments, which is why they're considered the colour of
royalty.

Cheers

--

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
A/Prof Russell Standish                  Phone [phone] (mobile)
Mathematics                        
UNSW SYDNEY 2052                 hpcoder at hpcoders.com.au
Australia                                http://www.hpcoders.com.au
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

[Phil Henshaw-2]

Now that what I've been talking and warning about the danger of, and
explaining how to avoid, reduce the impact of or then mitigate, is
happening, what I'm doing?   It looks as if my 'job' of making any kind of
learning about the systems phenomenon underlying it appear silly is
finished, so I can end the extra time off I took to push every avenue I
could find, and can now go back to work again.   It seems I accepted a new
job, to coordinate the architectural detailing of St. Patrick's Cathedral
renovation starting Monday... so I'll again have something productive to do.
:-)  Stuff works in weird ways I guess.

Where I got to was that the form of our models is conceptually different
from the form of nature, in that nature has loads of independent parts with
their own behaviors, so only a model of questions could ever be consistent
with it, not a model of answers.  So, for making models we can trust, it's
inherent in nature that declaring failure is the key to success.  Hey! No
wonder it didn't go over.



Phil

[glen ep ropella]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Prof David West wrote:
> Major distraction prevented replying sooner.

That's the beauty of e-mail!

> "No cultural universals" is the antidote to the disease of ethnocentrism

Aha!  I hadn't thought of that, at all.  So, regardless of the finer
points about "universal", abstraction, and such, the proposition "There
are no cultural universals" serves as a kind of dialectical tool to pop
the audience out of any ethnocentric paradigm they might be in when they
first hear it.  And, of course, that proposition (neither true nor
false, really) would continue to help refine rationale throughout one's
research.

Very cool.

> necro-cannabilism - there is no category change involved at all.  In
> necro-cannabalism, in fact lineage is acknowledged and serves to set
> priorities - I get to consume the remains of my parents and children
> before the rest of the band gets their share.

Would you mind citing an example of a culture that engaged in
necro-cannabalism that acknowledges lineage?  I had no idea such
cultures existed.  Or, if info is plentiful, is "necro-cannabalism" the
primary key word?

> are made - in the form of "all cultures abhor murder."  To deny cultural
> universals in this context is simply stating that in the areas of world
> view, values, norms, beliefs, and language there is no more universality
> across cultures in the abstract than there is in the concrete.  Even if
> there appears to be syntactic commonality (all cultures believe in the
> supernatural) there is not semantic consistency, each culture "means"
> something different for the same syntactic expression.

I get the point, here, about the grounding changing between any two
cultures.  However, it's one thing to say that the semantic grounding
_changes_, which is a weak argument for locality.  It's much stronger to
say that, when the semantic grounding changes from one culture to the
next, there are no semantic _mappings_ between the two groundings that
allow an invariant across any of those mappings.  I.e. just because the
semantic grounding changes doesn't mean it completely changes.  There
can be (and are, I suspect) some invariants when mapping the semantic
groundings between any _two_ cultures.  And I suspect there are
invariants when those mappings are applied.

That would mean that given any _two_ cultures, there are some
identifiable universals (over the set of two).

But as we increase the size of the set from two to three to N, the
number of those invariants shrinks, perhaps quite rapidly.

So, the weak form of "There are no cultural universals" simply
acknowledges the uncertainty between any quantification over the set of
cultures.  But a strong form would precisely specify the quantification
(over _all_ cultures, given any 10 cultures, given any 2 cultures, etc.)
and it would reserve the word "universal" for "over all cultures".  But
that would be an idealization or limit process because we're too
ignorant of _all_ cultures (I suspect).

Is there such a strong argument out there?  Do we have some idea of how
rapidly invariants fade as the number of cultures is increased?  And if
the number of invariants stays _pretty_ high over most (almost all)
cultures and only collapses after some of the more bizarre cultures are
added, then it's reasonable to say that there _are_ some practical (not
ideal or theoretical) cultural "universals" (or "almost universals").

> Sometimes it takes time to sort this issue out.  Biology has only
> recently started to provide the evidence that suggests "hardwired"
> causes/origins for common supernatural experiences - neuro-theology.
> The supposed "cultural" notions of beauty and sexual attractiveness have
> been shown to originate in biological universals like bilateral
> symmetry, and the ability to "smell" each other's immune systems.
>
> Some of the most interesting, and unresolved, data is found in very
> basic phenomenon.  For example, color perception / color terms in
> language.  Cultures have 2 - n color terms in their language:
>      If they have exactly two terms they are always black and white (or
>      equivalents like, warm and cold)
>      If they have exactly three terms, the third term is always red - (B
>      / W / R)
>      If they have exactly four terms, the fourth is always green - (B /
>      W / R / G)
>      Five, the fifth is always brown - (B / W / R / G / Br)
>      Six, purple - (B / W / R / G / Br / P)
>      Seven, plus, no pattern.
> In the cases 1-6 terms, why the commonality?  Biology in the form of
> occular perception? Unlikely.  Natural Law? Possible, but
> unsatisfactory.  Culture? Unlikely.

But doesn't rationale like this lead one to think that "culture" is,
itself, just a convenient packaging of biology?  I.e. all culture
probably reduces to biology, we're just too ignorant to know _how_?

- --
glen e. p. ropella, 971-219-3846, http://tempusdictum.com
The world henceforth will be run by synthesizers, people able to put
together the right information at the right time, think critically about
it, and make important choices. - E.O. Wilson

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iD8DBQFH4AjSpVJZMHoGoM8RAq+2AJ9tq50KcXv5ZwClA0EXV0/yjEduCwCgnkyx
yQqZvPLaxygKf944RfpmA3Y=
=ftbJ
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----