Posted by
glen ep ropella on
Mar 11, 2008; 8:41pm
URL: http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/questions-tp525926p525929.html
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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.comWe 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
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