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Anaxagoras -> RE: Guess who's Jewish now? (10/12/2010 3:05:51 PM)
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ORIGINAL: Rule
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ORIGINAL: Anaxagoras
I get the impression Rule is practising a kind of philosophical nominalism
I have no idea what that is. I just define a functional concept within evolution biology.
It refers to categorisation being largely an abstraction less related to reality as it is made manifest.
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ORIGINAL: Rule
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ORIGINAL: Anaxagoras
since he uses the words “as defined by…”. In other words he defines a certain concept – all circumcised males relate to a common Jewish ancestor.
That is not what I said. Per my definition all circumcised males and those (cultures) who practice circumcision are Abrahamic Jews. It does not have anything to do with culture or religion initially: culture and religious modes are evolutionary consequences of circumcision.
If you read on I qualify the point by referring to culture so it is culture in an ancestral sense rather than a racial sense. Thus we are in some agreement here. However, I don't see how it can be asserted culture and religion derived from circumcision. The act in itself has little medical necessity most of the time. Thus the procedure is typically non-utilitarian and so related to belief and religion even.
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ORIGINAL: Rule
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ORIGINAL: Anaxagoras
Since he refers to “populations” rather than race then it is likely that this is a cultural phenomenon that unites said populations.
No. Culture is a consequence of evolutionary relevant behavior. Populations, as far as (evolution) biologists are concerned, are usually defined by mating boundaries: most breeding is within the population and there may be a degree of cross-boundary breeding with one or more other populations. For example: most people in city A will take a mate from city A, but there may be a certain frequency of mate taking from city B. Analogously: A fair amount of people in the horse breeding population may marry another horse breeder, but significant portions might instead marry people from the populations of butchers or cattle raisers.
You are something of a social determinist. It is clear that culture does develop as a consequence as you say due to biological behaviour in a certain context. However I don't believe culture can simply be explained through this process alone. There is too much about culture that is under-determined causally.
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ORIGINAL: Rule
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ORIGINAL: Anaxagoras
One objection I would raise is that while it is quite possible there once was a mythological figure called Abraham since many myths are rooted in some basic truth, it is less clear he originated the practice of circumcision.
Indeed, he did not. Circumcision was widely practiced in the area before the time of Abraham. Do recall that Abraham was not indigenous to the area: he was an invader from Ur of the Chaldeans. I am certain that he was commanded by his pagan god to circumcise Isaac. As for the rest, there are two possibilities: either he himself determined to circumcise himself and his people also - in which case he was the nutcase - or as the Old Testament says, his pagan god commanded him to do so - in which case his pagan god was the nutcase.
If he was not the originator of circumcision and if you contend that culture and religion followed the act then why attach importance to Abraham with regard to all circumcised males? It is not merely Jews and circumcised Muslims, which are of course culturally related to Jews, but you assert this is the case for all males. There are more than two possibilities in your suggested scenario. For example, he may have perceived some benefit to circumcision and attempted to make it a cultural and religious practice.
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ORIGINAL: Rule
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ORIGINAL: Anaxagoras
I think it is clear there is such a thing as race in reality as otherwise it seems difficult to explain why there are very distinctive regional characteristics in peoples. The basic notions of Caucasoid/European, black/African, Asian etc. shouldn’t necessarily be dismissed IMHO even if these concepts are currently unsupported by genetics. They are also politically unfashionable due to a lot of clear inferior/superior notions of race previously. “We can’t find it so it mustn’t exist” arguments are fairly common in science, and while they can of course be true, aren’t necessarily so.
You are wrong. The concept of race has proven to be non-functional in the science of biology.
I may well be wrong lol but I am not dogmatic about it unlike a certain someone who is extremely categorical. I am no expert on this issue but will make one point. If there is a phenomenon that is experienced universally but a certain paradigm of science cannot explain or does not recognise it, then it may well be a fiction but there is also a possibility it could still real. Perhaps we all hallucinate but the fact remains that we can often tell the general regional origins of people by a quick glance. It cannot be coincidental that we can usually identify people of asian ancestry as Asian and so on.
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