---- by J. L. S.
In his comments on Kramer's "Selfish Memes?", Jason Kennedy refers to Dawkins's views on Latin America.
In fairness to Dawkins, I must say that the ref. I was quoting comes straight from his (i.e. Dawkins's) entry in wiki, which reads:
"Dawkins has expressed concern"
-- this is of course 'concern-d'. 'Concern' is one of Grice's favourite words. I once presented Steven Stich with a quote from Grice on this (in the face, of Stich). He read it in silence. I asked. "So what d'you think?". "Preposterous!" he said! The quote was along these lines, straight from Gr75, later repr. as Gr91:
"We need to care about
psychological attitudes,
such as "She believes
that p"
not because we just
want to explain her
behaviour, but because
we _CARE_ for her."
--- It sounded to me like a good caveat for philosophers like Grice himself in that manifesto who think of philosophical psychology as a "theory" where concepts only have an 'explanatory' bite to them. Grice is allowing explicitly such an appeal to psychological attitude ascription is insufficient -- for broader issues or stuff the pirot may bring along.
the wiki continues:
"about the growth of the planet's
human population, and about the
matter of overpopulation.[131]
In The Selfish Gene, he briefly
mentions population growth,
giving the example of Latin America,
whose population, at the time
the book was written,
was doubling every 40 years."
So, if we ever get to publish this "The Grice companion" and may want to have a ref. list we may want to check with the SECOND edition!
These people, every ten years or so, come out with a second edition. I love Dawkins! Ditto Axelrod. In the second edn. for example Dawkins expressedly expresses vis a vis Axelrod.
I think TSG was early 1980s, and that statistics
seems to have been around for a time!
These things about evolution sort of bother me. They go so back in time! Every 40 years?! That's quite a stretch. And then we have Dawkins's new book on "The best show on earth". Lovely title, but going back in time a couple hundred years back right?
Etc.
----
Is a mime like a meme, but only different?
In English, the 'mocking-bird' so called in the American South, is the 'mimus' of the Latins, I think.
A New Orleans lifelong native the other was teaching or reminding me of that lovely conditional:
If the mocking bird won't sing
I'm gonna buy you a diamond ring!
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"Concern" has been well-used as a means of plausibly denying ad hominem attacks in the political sphere - "I am concerned that Obama may be inviting terrorists to destroy America, I'm not saying that he is, however, I feel it only right and proper to keep repeating my concerns until the American people become terrified of him..."
ReplyDelete!
May I just say that the Dawkins comment about the population doubling every 40 years, and using this as the basis for his 'concern' was disingenuous if it did not also factor in the amount of available land and resources in Latin America. It's not about facts, it is about context, right?
Besides, economic development is what slowed birth rates in the West, eugenics wasn't necessary, let's try investment, a historically proven method, first.
(This whole comment can be skipped as part of the debate going on here, I understand that.)
Related example : I lived in Memphis and there was a neighbourhood, very famous there, Germantown, lots of money. Well, they trumpeted the fact, as a means of showing how much progress they'd made with racial integration, of noting that 'the black population of Germantown has doubled in the last 20 years'. What they failed to mention was that it had indeed doubled, from one household to two.
Amen!
Yes, context.
ReplyDeleteAnd one wonders about the "Latin" bit in the "Latin American" thing, because, while Dawkins doesn't seem to care, all those expressions have _history_! But we don't want to sound too political.
For example, personally, I prefer the sobriquet, "South America": it does _things_ to me! (I like to sail, and Surely we won't find
The Yachtman's Guide to Latin America
---
The Yachtman's Guide to South America!
--- I'm in my Cowes-Week persona (ha ha).
----
But seriously, those beaches!
But yes, context!
ReplyDelete"Latin America" comrprises "South America", but let me just focus on "South America" -- for the time being.
Grice wrote:
ReplyDelete"_Read_ "Selfish Gene""
-- ("The H. P. Grice Collection").
You read TSG (for he couldn't have read the second edition, now could he?)
"The population of South America
is doubling every 40 years".
Is this a computer projection? I'm bothered that all the charm of the TOPIC to Axelrod's book (second edn) is based on computer projections! ("We are not computers!" says Grice) -- vide "Sticky Wicket", this blog. They Kant even spell 'wicket', or 'sticky', or both.
---
So suppose he was writing and reading in 1980
1980 population: a
1940 population a:2
1900 populaton a:4
1860 population a:8
--- This last bit touches me, because, hey, I was born on the Pampas, because my Ligurian family left Liguria and spawned my (selfish, ha!) gene in that stretch of the River Plate (west) coast where they still grow Ligurian grapes!
So, I'm VERY interested in population growth in Buenos Aires! ("Buenos Aires province" to be more specific!)
As Octavio Paz said,
"The Mexicans descend from the Aztecs;
the Peruvians descend from the Incas;
the Argentines descend from the ships."
Mind, I do have an Italian passport! So, what gives?!
ReplyDelete-- But seriously I AM an Argentine and proud of it!
"Senhorita Nina,
disliked the tango --
I rather read a book and that is that!"
Noel Coward.
The problem with Italians arriving from Liguria in the 1870s is that they were so
ReplyDeleteunadventurous it hurts. Instead of immersing in the vast pampas, they stood so close to the water it dumped!
I'm glad that, like W. H. Hudson (the name of a railway station next to where I was born -- I was born in the Italian Hospital in the area which was originally the ranch-house of one Martin Pereyra Iraola), I was born in purified airs!
ReplyDeleteI mean: we saw the grass and the green and the rest of it!
Hudson is my kind of hero. And he wrote extensively on that: "Birds of La Plata", eg.
Back to population growth soon.
Hudson, rightly, detested the Italians in his area. "They scare the birds!". He would complain. And having been brought by them and among them, I share the feeling!
ReplyDeleteSo, we may need a mile by mile account of population growth every 1 year (perhaps) in specific districts. Kennedy's Germantown is a case in point.
ReplyDeleteAnd of course there are areas in NYC (I've NOT been!) which are more Latin-American than the bits I'm familiar with in Buenos Ayres! (I spell it with the "y" as the Brits would do FOR CENTURIES!)
---- I have loads of books about both "Buenos Aires" (city) and "Buenos Aires" (province) and there's lots of studies of population distribution. But we don't _care_. There's room enough, as Kennedy says, for things _other_ than Eugenia.
I think Dawkins was concerned (sic!), disingenously or not, because this 'mimes' his selfish gene. As everyone I've talked about this have told me: "The underprivileged's only way to survive is to _reproduce_ or plicate the selfish genes inside them."
So much for kith and kin. The 'eugenia' methods are varied, but they all dwell on 'education' because, as Dawkins knows, these things are _NOT_ inherited: they are not part of the born, but the bred, not part of the nature, but the nurture.
But we may need to know more of Dawkinsian (why do people drop the 's' when adjectivising?) eugenia and stuff. And find the Gricean connection of course!
For the time being, Kennedy's reminder, "Context, not just facts" seems like a pretty good Gricean-maximed thing and all.
I concur regarding Latin America as a description.
ReplyDeleteI'm on the isthmus.
Regarding eugenics, I can see Dawkins' attraction to it, as it stands as an acid test of his preparedness to be unemotional about the history of a particular set of ideas, to think only of its potential utility for mankind. What rationalism, to take something from the hands of the Nazis, and to dare! to dare even to pose The Great Question! Now there's a man...
Wait, I'm beginning to swoon.
How is the notion that a man is an end in himself reconciled with the notion of 'breeding for X'? What is man for, Mr Dawkins?
It seems rather greedy to enjoy all the prestige accorded a great intellectual, but then to wish to treat a vast quantity of other people's lives as having value (or lacking value) chiefly in what they can do for the species by way of their reproductive organs.
True -- but mind that Eugenia, alas (I think I like the feminine bit about this) was popular enough amongst those most Laconian of Grecians: The Laecedemonian.
ReplyDeleteApparently, they wrote little about it -- less so talked (Is that possible?). But one author I have most of the works by, in the Loeb Classical Library which I treasure at the Swimming-Pool Library, wrote extensively on the eugenic methodologia amongst the ... Spartans.
I know someone, L. Helm, who I have corresponded with elsewhere, who knows much more about this stuff. I have tried to get it discussed in Classics-L but failed, somehow. Xenophanes´s arguments (or reports) are interesting, if only from a Grecian historical perspective:
The man was from Attica, so he shouldn´t have CARED. But he used the "Spartan Question" to motivate the Athenians against their leaders!
In those days, loads of illegal Grecians in Greece! Notably Athenai (They pluralise their capitals down there -- I use "down" as if I were in Liguria -- coastal Liguria to boot).
They had specific classifications for those "illegal Grecians". Of course they had to be a "race" or breed OTHER than Greek or Hellenic.
But they were onto "tribes", too: pirots and gaggles of pirots. I don´t recall the specifics, but just to mention Athenai (which was the MODEL of the Athenian dialectic, for Grice, WoW:RE) should be sort of enough.
So, I would think the "eugenia" argument was popular back then -- and notably in the most "conservative" of the lot -- when playing the "Disgusted, Tunbridge Wells" role --: Plato in his "Republic". Etc.