At 11:55 AM 4/29/97 -0500, Edwina Taborsky wrote:

>First, I feel that homo sapiens is the only species on earth whose
>ability to live is primarily conceptual rather than genetic. By this
>I mean that human adaptive systems are learned rather than
>genetically stored. This gives an enormous amount of adaptive
>flexibility to this particular species. A deer must grow a coat of

I have quite have a different view of humanity.  Modern evolutionary
theory argues that humans were selected to be the best at getting
their genes into the next generation.  In other words, best at
exploitation[1] and deception[2].

I see the vast bulk of social theories as merely ways to rationalize
what we are genetically programmed to do.  Moreover, we are still
totally dependent on our natural life-support system.

Jay
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[1] Exploit: To employ to the greatest possible advantage.

[2] In the late 50s, the social scientist Erving Goffman made
    a stir with a book called THE PRESENTATION OF SELF IN
    EVERYDAY LIFE, that stressed how much time we all spend
    on stage, playing to one audience or another.  Goffman
    marveled that sometimes a person is "sincerely convinced
    that the impression of reality which he stages is the real
    reality."

    What modern evolution theory brings to Goffman's
    observation is an explanation of the practical function
    of self-deception: we deceive ourselves in order to deceive
    others better.  In his foreword to Richard Dawkins' THE
    SELFISH GENE, Robert Trivers noted Dawkins' emphasis on the
    role of deception in animal life and added, in a much-cited
    passage, that if indeed "deceit is fundamental to animal
    communication, then there must be strong selection to spot
    deception and this ought, in turn, to select for a degree of
    self-deception, rendering some facts and motives unconscious
    so as not to betray -- by the subtle signs of self-knowledge
    -- the deception being practiced."  Thus, "the conventional
    view that natural selection favors nervous systems which
    produce ever more accurate images of the world must be a
    very naive view of mental evolution." pp. 263-264,
    THE MORAL ANIMAL ,Robert Wright; Pantheon, 1994;
    ISBN 0-679-40773-1.