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Kuros
Joined: 27 Apr 2004
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 Posted: Tue Apr 03, 2007 7:16 pm Post subject: Noble Savage theory debunked? |
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Hobbes' Leviathan & Nietzsche's Geneology of Morals 1
Rousseau's On the Origins of Inequality and Montaigne's Essays 0
A History of Violence
I've posted only the Intro below. The entire article doesn't go longer than a few pages single-spaced printed out, it just looks long because the link has other articles attached below Pinker's article.
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Introduction
Once again, Steven Pinker returns to debunking the doctrine of the noble savage in the following piece based on his lecture at the recent TED Conference in Monterey, California.
This doctrine, "the idea that humans are peaceable by nature and corrupted by modern institutions�pops up frequently in the writing of public intellectuals like Jos� Ortega y Gasset ("War is not an instinct but an invention"), Stephen Jay Gould ("Homo sapiens is not an evil or destructive species"), and Ashley Montagu ("Biological studies lend support to the ethic of universal brotherhood")," he writes. "But, now that social scientists have started to count bodies in different historical periods, they have discovered that the romantic theory gets it backward: Far from causing us to become more violent, something in modernity and its cultural institutions has made us nobler."
Pinker's notable talk, along with his essay, is one more example of how ideas forthcoming from the empirical and biological study of human beings is gaining sway over those of the scientists and others in disciplines that rely on studying social actions and human cultures independent from their biological foundation. |
Now squabble amongst yourselves. Just be careful to use words and flames. We're beyond killing each other for our opinions, now. |
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mindmetoo
Joined: 02 Feb 2004
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| Posted: Tue Apr 03, 2007 9:42 pm Post subject: |
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| I don't think anyone in the serious anthropological sciences thinks along the "noble savage" line. It's an idea (like the 100th monkey myth) popular with certain environmental and political causes, maybe. One might get it confused with the scientific debate regarding the extinction of the Neanderthal. Did the Neanderthal die out because of some environmental event, killed off in war with Homo sapiens, or bred out of existence by mating with Homo sapiens. |
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gang ah jee
Joined: 14 Jan 2003
Location: city of paper
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| Posted: Tue Apr 03, 2007 10:04 pm Post subject: |
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| mindmetoo wrote: |
| I don't think anyone in the serious anthropological sciences thinks along the "noble savage" line. It's an idea (like the 100th monkey myth) popular with certain environmental and political causes, maybe. |
Yeah, I think it's only really common amongst academics in the humanities with vested interests in identity politics - women's studies, radical environmentalists, various ethnic studies, etc, etc - that brand of postmodernist Kuhn-abusers who argue that scientific knowledge is a reflexive social construct priviledging the elite and that all worldly problems stem from white guys.
Vaguely related, has anyone seen this article yet?
Quantum Feminist Mnemotechnics: The Archival Text, Digital Narrative and the Limits of Memory
It looks like Dawkins' prediction of a Feminist quantum mechanics has already come true. (And no, it's not another Sokal hoax) |
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mindmetoo
Joined: 02 Feb 2004
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| Posted: Tue Apr 03, 2007 10:36 pm Post subject: |
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| gang ah jee wrote: |
| that brand of postmodernist Kuhn-abusers who argue that scientific knowledge is a reflexive social construct priviledging the elite and that all worldly problems stem from white guys. |
We don't know anyone like that, right? |
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gang ah jee
Joined: 14 Jan 2003
Location: city of paper
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| Posted: Tue Apr 03, 2007 10:42 pm Post subject: |
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| mindmetoo wrote: |
| gang ah jee wrote: |
| that brand of postmodernist Kuhn-abusers who argue that scientific knowledge is a reflexive social construct priviledging the elite and that all worldly problems stem from white guys. |
We don't know anyone like that, right? |
Well, not so much on this board, no. If we were talking about the other type that argues that scientific knowledge is a social construct priviledging left-wing and progressive interests ... that might be a bit different. |
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mindmetoo
Joined: 02 Feb 2004
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| Posted: Tue Apr 03, 2007 10:46 pm Post subject: |
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| gang ah jee wrote: |
| mindmetoo wrote: |
| gang ah jee wrote: |
| that brand of postmodernist Kuhn-abusers who argue that scientific knowledge is a reflexive social construct priviledging the elite and that all worldly problems stem from white guys. |
We don't know anyone like that, right? |
Well, not so much on this board, no. If we were talking about the other type that argues that scientific knowledge is a social construct priviledging left-wing and progressive interests ... that might be a bit different. |
Ah yes. My bad. |
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Ya-ta Boy
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Location: Established in 1994
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| Posted: Wed Apr 04, 2007 5:14 am Post subject: |
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| Why doesn't anyone post about the savage noble anymore? |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Wed Apr 04, 2007 11:39 am Post subject: |
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| Kuros wrote: |
| Now squabble amongst yourselves... |
Ever read Shepard Krech's The Ecological Indian?
Debunked this myth long ago -- piece by piece. Only die-hard partisans, including some cultural anthropologists/archeaologists and environmentalists, continue to beat us over the head with this emotionally-driven, overly-romantic nonsense. Perhaps that is why new myth-busting accounts remain relevant in the debate.
And yes, those who stubbornly refuse to acknowledge that modern Western science is socially-constructed live in a self-important dream world -- their sneering condescension notwithstanding, thank you very much.
| Mindmetoo wrote: |
| I don't think anyone in the serious anthropological sciences thinks along the "noble savage" line... |
By the way, nice wanna-be grandiose denial-assertion. Has nothing to do with not a few anthropologists in the anthropology depts. I interact with, however. |
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gang ah jee
Joined: 14 Jan 2003
Location: city of paper
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| Posted: Wed Apr 04, 2007 12:02 pm Post subject: |
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| Gopher wrote: |
| Mindmetoo wrote: |
| I don't think anyone in the serious anthropological sciences thinks along the "noble savage" line... |
By the way, nice wanna-be grandiose denial-assertion. Has nothing to do with not a few anthropologists in the anthropology depts. I interact with, however. |
I think most people don't consider cultural anthropology to be 'serious anthropological science'. I'd say it has more to do with literary criticism than anything else, and as such few outside the humanities and the relevant political groups pay it much attention. |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Wed Apr 04, 2007 1:03 pm Post subject: |
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Right. Who here has ever even heard of Ruth Benedict or Margaret Mead -- or Clifford Geertz's "thick description," Claude L�vi-Strauss, or Eric Wolf either, for that matter.
In fact, no one pays any attention to the humanities or especially cultural anthro. Applied linguistics on the other hand...well, even the Sun orients itself around applied linguistics, no...?
Your kind of self-centeredness and conscious disciplinary myopia does not lead anywhere productive. |
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mindmetoo
Joined: 02 Feb 2004
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| Posted: Wed Apr 04, 2007 4:00 pm Post subject: |
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| Gopher wrote: |
| Your kind of self-centeredness and conscious disciplinary myopia does not lead anywhere productive. |
I wait to be convinced. |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Wed Apr 04, 2007 4:09 pm Post subject: |
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| mindmetoo wrote: |
| I wait... |
I suggest you do not hold your breath on your being convinced of anything you do not already believe, Mindmetoo.
This board is not about "convincing" but rather it is about people who learn, over time, that they dislike each other. Once they plot this, then they use "current events" pretexts to discredit each other and worse. It is about BLT-Sandwich-Maker calling other posters "child," "fool," and "irrelevant" five-thousand times. It is about R.S. Refugee and Octavius's and others' relishing in America's faults and shortcomings. It is about Ddeubel's self-righteous, soap-box preaching. Or, take your most salient contribution here, Mindmetoo: it is about two-hundred-plus-page threads that feature your and others' attacking/ridiculing Rteacher's religious views and vice versa with no end in sight.
You and your friend here even force "consensus" on an issue or two and then expend much effort to slam those who object to your pretentions to universal reality -- even to the extent that you casually dismiss and mock other disciplinary perspectives -- especially those you find inconvenient.
In any case, "exchanging views" is at the bottom of the agenda, as surely even someone as highly-committed to his own worldview as you even recognizes. So wait all you like, then. But I am afraid you would never find me "convincing" on any issue, Mindmetoo...
Last edited by Gopher on Wed Apr 04, 2007 5:55 pm; edited 2 times in total |
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mindmetoo
Joined: 02 Feb 2004
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| Posted: Wed Apr 04, 2007 5:24 pm Post subject: |
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| Gopher wrote: |
| mindmetoo wrote: |
| I wait... |
I suggest you do not hold your breath on your being convinced of anything you do not already believe, Mindmetoo.
This board is not about "convincing" but rather it is about people who learn, over time, that they dislike each other. Once they plot this, then they use "current events" pretexts to discredit each other and worse. It is about BLT-Sandwich-Maker calling other posters "child," "fool," and "irrelevant" five-thousand times. It is about R.S. Refugee and Octavius's and others' relishing in America's faults and shortcomings. It is about Ddeubel's self-righteous, soap-box preaching. Or, take your most salient contribution here, Mindmetoo: it is about two-hundred-plus-page threads that feature your and others' attacking/ridiculing Rteacher's religious views and vice versa with no end in sight.
You and your friend here even force "consensus" on an issue or two and then expend much effort to slam those who object to your pretentions to universal reality -- even to the extend that you casually dismiss and mock other disciplinary perspectives.
In any case, "exchanging views" is at the bottom of the agenda, as surely even someone as highly-committed to his own worldview as you even recognizes. So wait all you like, then. But I am afraid you would never find me "convincing" on any issue, Mindmetoo... |
You wrote all that huh? Wow! Actually, I used to think the US should pull out of Iraq. But debate and reason have convinced me this might not be the best idea. There are no egg laying bats, huh? I've produced an egg laying bat. You're wrong.
Still, I wait. |
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gang ah jee
Joined: 14 Jan 2003
Location: city of paper
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| Posted: Wed Apr 04, 2007 6:23 pm Post subject: |
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| Gopher wrote: |
Right. Who here has ever even heard of Ruth Benedict or Margaret Mead -- or Clifford Geertz's "thick description," Claude L�vi-Strauss, or Eric Wolf either, for that matter.
In fact, no one pays any attention to the humanities or especially cultural anthro. Applied linguistics on the other hand...well, even the Sun orients itself around applied linguistics, no...?
Your kind of self-centeredness and conscious disciplinary myopia does not lead anywhere productive. |
Well actually, people once thought that the Sun orbited Applied Linguistics, but the Copernican Revolution showed that the opposite was true. Under both paradigms, however, the underlying reality was that cultural anthropology was not a serious anthropological science.
Anyway, you've missed the point. The problem is not cultural anthropology or any other discipline, it's postmodernism/constructivism/perspectivism, and the general distain for logic and evidence that's common throughout the humanities. Once the lazy scholar decides that nothing is true all he must do is make a mere show of supporting his arguments, free from the oppressive, unfashionable constraints of verification and falsifiability. That's what your 'noble savage' cultural anthropologists do, Gopher. Is that what you do also?
And mindmetoo - have you ever had the chance to read Gross & Levitt's Higher Superstition or Sokal and Bricmont's Intellectual Impostures? I think you'd like them. |
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Rteacher
Joined: 23 May 2005
Location: Western MA, USA
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| Posted: Wed Apr 04, 2007 8:21 pm Post subject: |
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| The man-made concept of falsifiability doesn't apply to the Absolute Truth. However, it may be used to indirectly prove the existence of the nonphysical soul. By reviving the consciousness of a dead body by some combination of chemicals, one can prove that consciousness can be materially produced. Otherwise, the assumption should be that consciousness is a symptom of the spirit-soul... |
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