3 ideas
| 23123 | Basic to human culture are binary oppositions, such as eating raw or cooked [Levi-Strauss, by Green,TH] |
| Full Idea: Lévi-Strauss made canonic to French structuralism the idea that human culture could be understood through a series of binary oppositionsn - the difference between what could be eaten raw and what cooked being one of the most fundamental. | |
| From: report of Claude Lévi-Strauss (works [1950]) by T.H. Green - Prolegomena to Ethics 1 | |
| A reaction: My guess is that such oppositions can often be illuminating, but will always be eventually judged as too simplistic. |
| 16051 | Life has a new supervenient relation, which alters its underlying physical events [Morgan,L] |
| Full Idea: When some new kind of relatedness is supervenient (say at the level of life), the way in which the physical events which are involved run their course is different in virtue of its presence. | |
| From: Lloyd Morgan (Emergent Evolution [1923], pp.15-16), quoted by Terence Horgan - From Supervenience to Superdupervenience 1 | |
| A reaction: This is a clear assertion of 'downward causation' at the first introduction of 'supervenience', supporting 'emergentism' about life and mind. That is, the newly-emerged feature has new causal powers that affect the physical system from outside. Wrong! |
| 7517 | I could take a healthy infant and train it up to be any type of specialist I choose [Watson,JB] |
| Full Idea: Give me a dozen healthy infants, and my own specified world to bring them up in, and I'll guarantee to take any one at random and train him to become any type of specialist I might select - doctor, artist, beggar, thief - regardless of his ancestry. | |
| From: J.B. Watson (Behaviorism [1924], Ch.2), quoted by Steven Pinker - The Blank Slate | |
| A reaction: This was a famous pronouncement rejecting the concept of human nature as in any way fixed - a total assertion of nurture over nature. Modern research seems to be suggesting that Watson is (alas?) wrong. |