Posted by alexandra_k on July 26, 2005, at 17:28:16
In reply to Re: gender differences » Tamar, posted by Dinah on July 26, 2005, at 12:43:06
> I genuinely do believe the differences within each sex (or species) far outweigh the similarities shown by the group as a whole.
I think that depends on what similarities you care to list. We often focus on the differences because the similarities are so 'obvious' that we find it hard to see them in front of our faces.
For example, the physical characteristics of males and females are different...
But there is more similarity between females than between males and females.For example, almost all people learn to communicate by using language. Something has to go seriously wrong for people to not do this. Whereas no other animal is able to make use of utterance structure (syntax).
Language is a HUGE difference. One of those differences in degree (because animals do communicate to some extent) resulting in a difference in kind kind of things.
Human beings also alter their environment in radical ways. We build huge buildings (artificial environments). No other animal has been able to do that to the remarkable extent that we have. In a very real sense we are a species living in an environment that our species has created.
We travel all around the world in planes, trains, and cars. We have travelled to the moon.
Even Babble... No other species that we know of could make use of Babble. This is an artificial environment that members of other species couldn't even begin to comprehend.
Wittgenstein once said that 'if a lion could talk we could not understand what it was saying'. By this he means that animals are of such a radically different form of life that we could not grasp the categories in the world that they do. I'm not sure that this is quite right... Maybe he was a little too focused on the differences...
There has been a swinging tendancy with respect to our view on animals. We grant they have minds (fairly much like us) then we take that away. Then we grant they have minds, then we take that away. I'm not sure that I can remember but... Maybe it was Plato, Aristotle, the Middle ages... and then Descartes took it away again and said animals were complex biological machines whereas people are radically different because we have an immaterial soul which is the seat of our free will.
But to focus tooooooo much on the similarities leads into behaviourism. They focus mostly on animals because they believe that animals are so very similar to us that they can learn a lot about human behaviour by studying animals. So they study chickens and rats and pigeons and cats and horses and primates believing that they will be able to learn things that apply to human beings.
That works to a certain extent. To the extent that we share similar basic structures in our brains responsible for sleep and waking digestion reproductive behaviour fight and flight response etc etc.
But then... We are different because our brains are different. We have a (comparatively) highly developed cerebral cortex that is responsible for our 'higher functions' and the degree to which we have them is radically different from animals. Our ability to think abstractly: to do logic, mathematics, to think about concepts such as tomorrow and yesterday and 9.45am. About money and language and god and clothes and television and computers.
Memory, learning, thinking, language, higher processes...
My understanding is very crude (so you will have to bear with me)... But I think there are two pathways in the brain. Very very roughly when the stimuli goes in it gets sent to some of the relatively primitive structures responsible for the production of a physiological / emotional response. From there... It can get sent fairly much straight to the motor production area so we 'react'. Or it can get sent to do a couple loops of the cerebral cortex first. We can think about it. Think about different things we COULD do etc etc. BEFORE we act. We can do that.
Sterelney talks about 'decoupled representations' which are supposed to be... beliefs, basically. Animals are more set up like this: stimulus -> response. We do that a lot of the time. But we also have the capacity to do this: stimulus -> round and round the cortex (have a think about it) -> response.
But then some people have trouble with impulse control...
sigh.
hence my babbling to you...
now I better get back to work.sorry.
i know this is only partly relevant.
but i felt something a little like a duty to try and prevent your becoming toooooooo much of a behaviourist.
sometimes i need a little help there myself.
;-)
poster:alexandra_k
thread:525223
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/admin/20050716/msgs/533860.html