Biology Versus Culture.

[Mr Hyde]

What is the difference between somthing being biological versus somthing being a cultural construction?

[RichardHresko]

What is the difference between somthing being biological versus somthing being a cultural construction?

This is a false dichotomy. The differences among cultures reflect, among other things, the range of behaviors that are available to us given our biological make-up.

[Bvalltu]

One of my professors told me a theory once. He thought that men flipping through channels with the remote comes from our old hunter days when we scanned the horizons in search of prey.

[billyjack]

This is a false dichotomy. The differences among cultures reflect, among other things, the range of behaviors that are available to us given our biological make-up.

its true that our biological make-up can adapt to many different environments making for many different cultures. but these differences are more a result of the environment than the biological make-up of folks. i think this thread should take it as a given that we humans are all genetically identical for the most part.

culture and biology are certainly not mutually exclusive but they are different. i'd differentiate the two by saying that people generally THINK of biology as in flux (life, death, seasons of the year) while THINKING cultural constructs are fixed, meant to last forever (morality, god, souls)


One of my professors told me a theory once. He thought that men flipping through channels with the remote comes from our old hunter days when we scanned the horizons in search of prey.

your proff ripped that off from seinfeld

[RichardHresko]

its true that our biological make-up can adapt to many different environments making for many different cultures. but these differences are more a result of the environment than the biological make-up of folks. i think this thread should take it as a given that we humans are all genetically identical for the most part.

culture and biology are certainly not mutually exclusive but they are different. i'd differentiate the two by saying that people generally THINK of biology as in flux (life, death, seasons of the year) while THINKING cultural constructs are fixed, meant to last forever (morality, god, souls)



your proff ripped that off from seinfeld

Human beings are most certainly not genetically identical (not sure what to do with the "for the most part").

To consider the environment separately from the genetic makeup would be to distort the picture. The environment makes certain alleles more likely to be passed on, while the current set of alleles determine (within limits) the current generation.

While culture and biology are not identical, they may not be separable in a meaningful way.

The point about what people think is biology and what they think is a cultural construct leads nowhere since it need not connect to what is actually going on. To go down that road would appear to be about as useful as having a vote on quantum mechanics.

[Mr Hyde]

For me somthing in which that is biological happens naturally on it's own versus somthing of culture that happens only when it is conditioned to happen.

In many cases habits of culture cannot happen on their own without first being subjected to a conditioning process. The presence of biological features of the human expirience however need no conditioning at all.

While it may be that culture may have biological presences I would not say that it is entirely biological since there are cases where in a cultural setting people will not behave in culturally accepted habits on their own by themselves but instead are later on conditioned to behave by assimilative conditioning.

( In some cases against their own will.)

[RichardHresko]

For me somthing in which that is biological happens naturally on it's own versus somthing of culture that happens only when it is conditioned to happen.

In many cases habits of culture cannot happen on their own without first being subjected to a conditioning process. The presence of biological features of the human expirience however need no conditioning at all.

While it may be that culture may have biological presences I would not say that it is entirely biological since there are cases where in a cultural setting people will not behave in culturally accepted habits on their own by themselves but instead are later on conditioned to behave by assimilative conditioning.

( In some cases against their own will.)

The distinction is not as clear as you make it out to be. Let's take something simple: birds and monarch butterflies. Birds are conditioned to avoid eating monarchs by tasting one and finding it unpleasant (because of the alkaloids the monarch caterpillar stores from eating milkweed). Clearly this is biological and not cultural conditioning.

Instead of a definitional distinction I would suggest you offer a concrete example and we'll see where it goes.

[Mr Hyde]

Instead of a definitional distinction I would suggest you offer a concrete example and we'll see where it goes.

A excellent example would be old christianity that looked at sex as being sinful or how some people went about in the act of sex as being sinful. How about that as an analogy?

Biologically people were doing what came natural to them but it was the cultural element which condemned not that of biology itself.

[RichardHresko]

A excellent example would be old christianity that looked at sex as being sinful or how some people went about in the act of sex as being sinful. How about that as an analogy?

Biologically people were doing what came natural to them but it was the cultural element which condemned not that of biology itself.

There are several things wrong with that example. First, you have not specified which Christians and in what context. Secondly, there are many biological examples of communal living where there is virtually no sex within the community (social insects come to mind, as well as naked mole rats). So abstaining from sex is a biological option. Also reproduction is reduced in many many stressed organisms. Consider the difficulty of breeding some species in captivity.

Furtive sexual behavior is not at all unusual in the animal kingdom, especially among primates.

Also a number of practices are condemned that have good biological justifications. Incest taboos are one example. In Sri Lanka, for example, to show how refined the process can be, unions of first cousins born of sisters are considered incestuous, while those of brothers are not. Given sex-linked genetic disorders are passed on the X-chromosome, this taboo makes biological sense.

[The Atheist]

In Sri Lanka, for example, to show how refined the process can be, unions of first cousins born of sisters are considered incestuous, while those of brothers are not. Given sex-linked genetic disorders are passed on the X-chromosome, this taboo makes biological sense.

Not to mention that the brothers might not be the fathers, while the sisters are pretty likely to be the mothers - like some African monarchical lines.

I think you're deliberately obscuring the line a little in the social vs biological argument.

Taking the time-frame of biological change, and with cultural change which can be achieved in a generation, the difference is often quite stark.

The sex example is an excellent one, given that our biological propensity is to do it like bonobos, while cultural mores have ebbed and flowed in various societies and centuries without changing the base behaviour. Every society, no matter how repressed, has had adultery, fornication and homosexuality. When biological imperatives overcome cultural mores even unto death (gays and adulterers in Iran, for example) I think we can be reasonably clear as to which is cultural and which bilogical.

[RichardHresko]

Not to mention that the brothers might not be the fathers, while the sisters are pretty likely to be the mothers - like some African monarchical lines.

I think you're deliberately obscuring the line a little in the social vs biological argument.

Taking the time-frame of biological change, and with cultural change which can be achieved in a generation, the difference is often quite stark.

The sex example is an excellent one, given that our biological propensity is to do it like bonobos, while cultural mores have ebbed and flowed in various societies and centuries without changing the base behaviour. Every society, no matter how repressed, has had adultery, fornication and homosexuality. When biological imperatives overcome cultural mores even unto death (gays and adulterers in Iran, for example) I think we can be reasonably clear as to which is cultural and which bilogical.

The question posed at the start of the thread was how do we know if something is a biological or a cultural construct. My position is that the two are ultimately not separable, or at minimum not separable in any meaningful way.

Or, to frame my response somewhat differently, the attempt to separate the cultural from the biological implies a duality in human nature (mind-body, if you like) that I do not want to concede as a given.

Or, to consider my response from yet another perspective, I question the premise that humans are outside of nature, which is an implication of the dichotomy posed.

So, instead of obscuring the line between cultural and biological constructs I am maintaining the stance that any such line that is drawn is arbitrary.

[The Atheist]

The question posed at the start of the thread was how do we know if something is a biological or a cultural construct. My position is that the two are ultimately not separable, or at minimum not separable in any meaningful way.

Yeah, that's the part I don't quite agree with.

[Mr Hyde]

Analogies are often drawn between biological evolution and ‘social’ or ‘cultural’ evolution. I believe these analogies are seldom enlightening, and often misleading. There are too many major differences between culture and biology for the analogies to be useful. Notably:

1. In biological heredity an individual has a well-defined set of ‘ancestors’. Coefficients of relationship can be calculated, and genetic regressions and correlations estimated. In contrast, cultural traits can be transmitted between any number of biologically unrelated individuals - even (by means of writing and other media) between people widely separated in time and space.

2. With unimportant exceptions, biological heredity cannot transmit traits acquired during the lifetime of the individual, whereas cultural transmission frequently does.

3. The processes leading to variation in biological heredity - mutation, recombination, meiosis, etc - are unconscious and random, in the sense that they have no tendency to serve any ‘purpose’. (I am ignoring the possibilities of eugenics, artificial selection, genetic engineering, etc.) In contrast, cultural change and innovation are often conscious and aimed at achieving a goal. There appears to be nothing in cultural transmission closely analogous to the ‘randomising’ features of biological heredity, which are important for biological evolution. (I’m aware that in some areas, such as linguistics, attempts have been made to estimate the amount of ‘transmission error’, but this remains a vague and limited analogy to biological mutation.)

4. Individuals have no choice in receiving their biological inheritance, whereas people frequently do have a choice in deciding whether to accept some cultural trait.

5. In biology there is a distinction between the genotype, which contains inherited information, and the phenotype, which is the set of observable traits of the individual, and is not directly inherited. The genotype forms the basis for development of the phenotype, which varies according to ‘nurture’, but has a predictable correlation with the genotype. The phenotype can to some extent be changed by deliberate choice, whereas the genotype cannot (again, ignoring genetic engineering, etc.) By contrast, in culture it is not clear that the genotype-phenotype distinction is applicable at all. Ultimately, cultural behaviour must have some genetic basis, but this may be of a general, species-wide kind. The specific form taken by the culture of a society is only very loosely constrained, if at all, by the genetic basis, as cultural traits can be abandoned or modified almost without limit during the lifetime of an individual.

6. Cultural traits are often specific to certain ethnic or social groups. Because of this it is often argued (or assumed) that in cultural evolution the group, rather than the individual, is the unit of evolution by natural selection. This would entail that groups have a life-cycle of birth, reproduction, and death. But groups do not literally die (except in the rare case of total extinction), and they do not literally reproduce themselves. Also, unlike biological individuals, they may split, reunite, or merge with other groups.

7. In biology, most organisms have the capacity to produce many offspring, and there is considerable variance in reproductive success. This is a prerequisite for natural selection to operate. In culture, by contrast, even if social groups may sometimes in a loose sense reproduce (e.g. by forming colonies), the rate of ‘reproduction’ is very low, and has little variance. For example, there are nearly 200 recognised independent countries in the world, but it is doubtful if any of them can be said to have ‘reproduced’ during the last century (unless you count the breakup of the USSR and Yugoslavia as ‘reproduction’). Yet there has been immense cultural change in all of those countries during that period.

8. Even when social groups give rise to ‘offspring’ in the form of colonies or emigrant communities, these seldom closely resemble the ‘parents’; e.g. Singapore is formed mainly by people of Chinese origin, but in many respects it is different from China.

9. Biological individuals compete with each other for available resources, and genes compete with each other for possession of genetic ‘loci’. There is nothing closely analogous to this in cultural evolution. It is true that some cultural traits are incompatible with others - you cannot be a Muslim and a Roman Catholic - but this is probably the exception rather than the rule. It is therefore doubtful whether there is a ‘struggle for existence’ among most cultural traits.

10. Biological traits are usually adaptive for the individuals who possess them, in the sense that possession of the trait enhances their reproductive fitness. Genes producing traits that impair reproductive fitness will be eliminated by natural selection. In contrast, there is no reason to suppose that cultural traits (with some important exceptions, such as economic competition in a free market) are usually beneficial in any sense to the individuals or groups that possess them. (As this goes against a lot of sociological and anthropological dogma, I may come back to it in another note.) It is true that people usually believe that their customs (witchcraft, circumcision, sacrificing the first-born, etc) are beneficial, but people hold a lot of false beliefs.

I conclude that the differences between biological and cultural evolution are so great that analogies between them are usually worthless. In particular, I do not believe that cultural traits have been produced by any process closely resembling natural selection.


http://www.gnxp.com/MT2/archives/000205.html

[RichardHresko]

http://www.gnxp.com/MT2/archives/000205.html

This is not on point. I never claimed that there was an analogy between the biological and the cultural transmission of information. I am saying that there is no useful way of separating cultural and biological constructs.

As your lengthy quote points out (section 5) genotype is not entirely destiny. I will also point out the more complex the organism the more other factors such as learning can impinge on the genetic.