Word: sftp
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...letter by John Tooby (Dec. 12) run under the headline "Science for the People?" is typical of the arguments sociobiologists have used against the criticisms of human sociobiology raised by Science for the People(SftP) and many others. We welcome this opportunity for people to examine the merits of sociobiology and to witness the tactics sociobiologists resort to in an effort to defend their field from an increasing barrage of criticism...
...people. To orchestrate a widespread media campaign designed to represent hundreds of people as racist, sexist Nazis working in the tradition of those who would "engineer consent to genocide" indicates a moralistic opportunism rather than any appreciation of what the opposition to racism truly concerns. Surely the propositions SFTP holds about the class bias of sociobiologists are hypotheses about the real world to be tested like any others. For those who speak so glibly, if only occasionally intelligibly, about falsifiability, they seem curiously unwilling to subject their beliefs to empirical tests. The field I know is a normal academic cross...
...Sociobiological theory and research deals almost exclusively with the evolved system of adaptations a species shares in common. Contrary to the curiously parallel assertions of SFTP and the neo-fascist groups, explaining behavioral differences between individuals or groups by attributing them to genetic differences between individuals or groups ferences between individuals or groups is not any central element of the paradigm-- most would agree that it is not an element at all. The fields that address such questions are genetics, and the moribund "trait" psychology. Since the paradigm deals with the adaptations of species, it cannot logically be made...
...empirical issues involved leads understandably to a wide spectrum of opinion within the field on certain questions, especially human behavior. Therefore, to assert that sociobiologists believe behavior is "genetic" and hence ineradicable or unmodifiable is an unscientific and unethical misrepresentation which plays into the hands of those who SFTP claims to fear most...
...fact that Science for the People has acted as it has is persuasive to many that there is at least an element of truth in their accusations. As there is no truth to them, what motivates SFTP? Their own ideology places emphasis on class interest--or, more simply, greed--as an explanation for why people behave as they do. But as we all know, but due to personal transgression are hesitant to say, there are are many other kinds of greed which we, especially in academic communities, are involved in: the greed for attention, the greed for self-righteousness...