Talk:Biological determinism/Archive 1

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This.

this page should probably be in some way merged with genetic determinism, no ? Or at least, their relationship should be made clearer ... Flammifer 03:58, 18 July 2005 (UTC)

Although it is not entirely th same, the relationship should probably be clarified. Karol 07:49, July 18, 2005 (UTC)

The brain picture

Shouldn't it be noted that those brains were photo-manipulated? They look like it- when you think about it, it's rediculous how such abnormal and bizzare brain structures could cause relatively minor criminal tendencies such as vagrancy and alcoholism. The 1920's were an integral part of the American eugenics movement and it wasn't that hard to photo-manipulate things like that. Even only several years later, people were able to pull of very advanced photo-manipulation techniques, most notable being that one photo of the man standing next to Stalin. To do it to brains wouldn't be much of a challenge.

Do you have actual evidence to support these assertions? Or does it just seem likely to you? There could trivially be other explanations (like the researchers decided to only study the brains of criminals who had a history of traumatic brain injury). WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:14, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

Biological determinism is the opposite of social determinism?

The article saids that biological determinism is the opposite of social determinism. I don't think that it is correct since there are other reductionist theories (like Technological determinism, Economic determinism, etc), so you could say that each one of these is the opposite of all others. AKoan (talk) 12:17, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

Biological determinism is, perhaps, the complement of social determinism?

"Opposite" can't be the right word. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 97.112.177.72 (talk) 15:41, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

Biologism IS NOT Biological Determinism

I strongly recommend to write an article on biologism, and therefore NOT TO REDIRECT (as it has been done) that entry here (to BIOLOGICAL DETERMINISM), and even less, NOT TO DELETE (as it has been proposed) that entry. The fact is, "biologism" is redirected to "biological determinism", which is a conceptual error highly biased by ideological issues. In no way the two terms are to be identified. Changes, then, should be made in both articles. I have written something on biologism for a conference; I'd be delighted to share it with you, but the fact is that it's in Spanish. Does anyone want to translate it or to use it for an English article?

"Biological determinism" might be merged with "Genetical determinsm", OK, but only with the proviso that they are not the same, but rather the latter is a certain type of the former. Anyhow, these two topics are not scientific theories or programs but ideologies. By contrast, biologism is a very respectable research program: it is the use of biological explanations in the social sciences and psychology, an important issue which should be defended and discussed. And certainly IT IS NOT biological determinism, AND THEREFORE "BIOLOGISM" SHOULD NOT BE REDIRECTED HERE. GoodBiologism (talk) 16:12, 26 April 2008 (UTC)GoodBiologism

On Lewontin and "biologism"

I can read in this article:

"[...] the uncritical use of biological determinism or biology as ideology (something that has been termed "biologism"). The most famous book on the subject is Richard Lewontin's "Biology as Ideology: The Doctrine of DNA" [...]"

That's untrue. The "has been termed" with no subject is tricky: WHO has termed that thing in that way? Biologism IS NOT THAT. Rather, let me cite, for instance, the Merriam-Webster definition of "biologism":

biologism. Function: noun. Date: 1920 the use of biological explanations in the analysis of social situations

Certainly, in Lewontin's Biology as Ideology: The Doctrine of DNA, the word "biologism" does not occur even a single time. Not at all. Maybe Lewontin used it elsewhere, for instance in his fallacious Not in our genes, where he adulterated citations and also quoted words of respectable people out of context to make they say what they don't say. But there, he just uses it as a synonym of "biological determinism", which, as I have previously stated, is a strong mistake.

(OFF TOPIC: May I recall that book's titles are to be written in italics?)

GoodBiologism (talk) 16:31, 26 April 2008 (UTC)GoodBiologism

Sub-categories of determinism

I would like to see something on the notion of hormonal determinism, given that a significant part of biological determinism consists in explaining the importance of hormones in the structure of the human body. Other types of determinism might include sexual determinism, neurological determinism, educational determinism, racial determinism, etc. ADM (talk) 00:40, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

This article is in terrible shape

This article is in terrible shape. It reads like a poor high-school essay, there are no references, and the initial definition is rubbish. I haven't got time to do much on it now, but it needs big clean-up. NBeale (talk) 14:03, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

Could it be merged into genetic determinism? Or perhaps vice versa? Both are fairly lame, but I guess that's inevitable when a subject either has no living adherents (who can be helpfully relied upon to provide primary sources), or which may be a straw man. Anyway, I'd favour merging GD into BD since the latter is broader than the former (which it incorporates). --PLUMBAGO 16:57, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

Agree with both of the comments above. Ironically, everyone today is a nature-nurture interactionist, yet there is no such page. There should be. Memills (talk) 17:58, 29 September 2011 (UTC)

Sociobiology section

I agree that the article needs a lot of work. I stumbled into and over the Sociobiology section whose author explains how it came about as part of class work (User:Cuevas Y/sandbox). I have started the work but don't enough of have a handle on the subject to integrate the content (if possible) with other viewpoints.--DadaNeem (talk) 21:27, 13 September 2014 (UTC)

Racism

". For the person with the racist ideals, it often plants the idea into their head that their own race is inarguably superior in every aspect and for the race being targeted, it puts into their mind the idea that they are somehow inferior, weaker, or stupider. This categorization “becomes determinative of personality and individual experience, and is itself a destination.[10]"

Thats a ridiculous statement. So are we to believe that if we replace the USA with Bushmen it will be exactly the same country since there will be no racism?

I find it hardly to believe. This should be removed.109.210.220.133 (talk) 13:47, 20 October 2014 (UTC)

Racism and Sexism?

I'm thinking of deleting these two sections. The racism section says that race is a social construct yet continues as if beliefs on race have anything to do with biological determinism. If race is a social construct then the category is no longer under biological determinism.

Also, the first paragraph of the "sexism" section has nothing to do with sexism. Scientific observations are not sexist, racist, homophobic, etc. "In a time where the women's rights movement was viewed as a legitimate hazard, anthropologists of the Anthropological Society set out to undermine gender equality in the educational and scientific realm" This is also unsourced. The only source given in the paragraph doesn't cover this. If nobody has any objections then I'll go ahead and delete them. I'd rather avoid a edit war if I do this. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.123.120.152 (talk) 05:33, 14 February 2016 (UTC)

Social construction

Well, I'd agree with many of the comments above. Further, the Social construction section takes the point-of-view of the book that it cites, rather than describing what that book's thesis is, and balancing it against that of other authors: the topic was intensely controversial, so it is unacceptable for the article to seem to take one side. Chiswick Chap (talk) 05:24, 9 April 2017 (UTC)

I've boldly split out the gender material as a new article and linked and summarized it here. That leaves this article largely empty, as others have noted above. I've created an (empty) History section - we need to cover Victorian views (criminality, etc) and lead through the 20th century (eugenics, etc) to the sociobiology debate, etc. Chiswick Chap (talk) 08:03, 9 April 2017 (UTC)

Supposed.

There is an argument on this page over the bias in language over saying the "supposed" heritability of IQ. This phrasing scientifically misleading because it makes it seem as though the academic consensus is that genes have nothing to do with IQ. Twin and adoption studies suggest that genes have something to do with IQ: Identical have a more correlated IQ's than fraternal twins. Biological siblings have more correlated IQs than adopted siblings. This is not to mention the genome wide association studies (GWAS) that have been done. The intro should make it clear that there is currently lots of lively debate about the heritability of IQ. It should not make it seem like the evidence is strong that genes have 0% to do with IQ. This is misleading.— Preceding unsigned comment added by Edwin keen (talk • contribs) 18:22, 27 September 2018 (UTC)

1) Thank you for moving from pure edit-warring to discussion.

2) Please remember to sign your posts using ~~~~.

3) It is never correct to try to edit-war any point of view into a Wikipedia article, certainly not when you have been told it's inappropriate repeatedly.

4) It is never appropriate, either, to introduce new material (cited or not) into the lead section of an article. The job of the lead is only to summarize the cited material in the body of the article.

5) To reply directly: No, it's your statement that is misleading, dangerously so as it happens. Nobody has suggested that genes have nothing to do with IQ: that is a straw man. Genes have something to do with every aspect of life, but only in conjunction with environment and learning, via many mechanisms including epigenetics. That is not at all the same, as you should well know, as assertions about the heritability of IQ, and in particular that different groups of people have distinguishable IQs. This page is not a forum for such a debate, so I'll just remind you, as again you must be aware, that there is no fixed "heritability of IQ" but a figure that among other things changes with age (everyone - please see the article Heritability of IQ for details). This article is not the place to get into the complexity of the question of what "heritability of IQ" means – the other article is the place for that. All we need to do here is say, in a word, that it's problematic and does not mean anything like what any non-scientist member of the public could possibly expect the term to mean, and specially nothing like what racist ideologues suppose it to mean. I think that "supposed" does that admirably, but if colleagues can find a better word that'll be fine with me. Chiswick Chap (talk) 18:57, 27 September 2018 (UTC)

I agree there is no fixed heritability of IQ. Heritability estimates are dependent on a context and environment. This is also true of height. Genes have something to do with height, but in a context of malnutrition more of the variance will be explained by environmental rather than genetic factors. So there isn't a fixed heritability of height. So instead of "heritability" we should maybe talk about a plural "heratabilities." As in, how much do genes explain what amount of the variance in what what populations in what contexts at what ages. However, in a given specific context, we can estimate how much of the variance in their IQ is explained by genes. And this is important.

Anyway, the "supposed" language makes it sound like genes have nothing to do with IQ which is false. You are saying this is a straw man, but I'm not claiming you are claiming that (which would be a straw man). I'm characterizing what that phrasing sounds like to the average person. This is a hypothesis about the interpretation of the typical person, not a poor summary of what you believe. Hence a hypothesis about other people, not a strawman of you.

We seem to have two desiderata: 1) You want to make it clear that "heritability" estimates are not one thing but depend on things like age and context and are not fixed. 2) I want to make it clear that there is ample evidence that genes have an influence on IQ as demonstrated by twin and adoption studies.

How can we creatively word this such that it makes both of us happy?

What if we said "debate about the various heritabilites of IQ"? This would make it clear that heritability of IQ is not one thing, but also that it is a thing talked about in the scientific literature.

Edwin keen (talk) 19:42, 27 September 2018 (UTC)

It's a bit clunky but certainly in the right direction. Let's see what other editors have to say. Chiswick Chap (talk) 19:58, 27 September 2018 (UTC)

Per MOS:ALLEGED, "supposed" is not ideal. When I saw it upon looking at this edit by Edwin keen, I also questioned it being there. And it's there more than once. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 23:36, 27 September 2018 (UTC)

I tried to change it to the thing we thought was a good idea. Why did you edit it back. I am trying to find a compromise here, and you editing it to initial thing does not seem like you are trying to find some reasonable compromise that takes into account both of our concerns. Edwin keen (talk) 00:37, 29 September 2018 (UTC)

It was TheDragonFire300 who reverted you this time. The grammar was off regarding "see also." Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 10:58, 29 September 2018 (UTC)

I was reading a book review today of The Trouble With Twin Studies and got to this article in browsing related information. I'm also pretty put of by a lot of the biased, wrong, and unsourced phrasing. For example

Samuel George Morton and Paul Broca attempted to relate the cranial capacity (internal skull volume) to skin colour, intending to show that white people were superior.

I have a source (and can go to primary sources later if I have time) that argues pretty strongly that Morton's interest in this field had absolutely nothing to do with a racist interpretation that was later ascribed to it. The article on Morton, a Quaker, itself also touches on the misapplication of these criticisms. So I think this statement is at best half-wrong, if not an outright lie, probably originating from Jay Gould's deeply flawed work on the subject. I see some other serious issues in this article -- it seems to suggest that genetic heritability of traits like intelligence is an uncommonly held, fundamentally racist belief instead of a testable, verifiable scientific truth. It also sort of straw-mans the idea of genetic heritability of traits like intelligence using language like '[BD is the belief that] human behaviour is controlled [by genes]', suggesting that BD may be a belief that behavioral traits are absolutely determined by genetic factors instead of the weaker claim that genes influence behavioral traits (which is certainly true). Those are things I take issue with from the introduction. In general it seems like this article is quite one sided and not at all close to representing a neutral point of view. --Maddata (talk) 18:03, 12 December 2018 (UTC)

NPOV

Biological determinism, if even exists such a thing, should refer to theories that ascribe to genetics the entire human behaviour and its spectrum. Emphatically, no scientific theory does this at the moment, surely not sociobiology. Saying that human beings, as animals, owe the origin of their behaviour to genetics and evolution is called science, not "biological determinism". More in general, the page lacks any understanding of biology whatsoever. Hence I added an NPOV, hoping some biologist or historian of science will amend or revise this page.--132.187.88.70 (talk) 12:19, 5 February 2020 (UTC)

That is a very strong but unjustified claim. Wikipedia's task is to report accurately on what is written in reliable sources. The article is written strictly neutrally, with no editorial opinion anywhere: all the statements in the text are cited directly to reliable sources, as they should be, so the article simply reflects both biological and philosophical opinion. It is historically true that the people named in the article held the views that are described. Chiswick Chap (talk) 12:25, 5 February 2020 (UTC)

Deeply flawed page

This Wikipedia page is deeply flawed. Firstly, it implies that genetic causation on behavior is a controversial scientific position or even discredited. It is not. Any mainstream textbook or popular book that covers modern psychology, neuroscience, or genetics will have discussions of genetic differences underlying behavior or at the very least how they affect psychiatric disorders (see, for example, the bestseller Behave by Robert Sapolsky). More troubling still is the claim that genetics and environment are "intertwined, especially through the mechanisms of epigenetics". While epigenetics has become very popular among laypeople recently, there is a strong perception in the biological community that it is being hyped and misused to advance the ideological position that genetic heredity doesn't matter. This is false, as histone modifications in epigenetics are not inherited. Furthermore, epigenetics studies with humans have tended to be deeply flawed. As for the discussion that "both genes and environment matter", this is a practically empty phrase that does not convey any information. What is the role of DNA in disorders like autism? What molecular role do they play? What are the heritabilities (percentages of variance attributable to genes)? None of that is discussed seriously here. The reality is that "genetic determinism" is nothing more than a worthless epithet invented by blank-slatists to discredit biological investigations of human nature. It conflates genetic causation with the idea that we could predict all of behavior just from a person's genes, which absolutely no respectable scientist has ever defended. In short, this page must be changed to acknowledge its scientific weakness and ideological motivation, or be eliminated altogether. Gandalf 1892 (talk) 23:23, 21 August 2022 (UTC)

Thank you for your thoughts. However, your arguments aren't sound. Firstly, Wikipedia articles are not judged on what they "imply", i.e. do not say. Secondly, on the supposed "ideological motivation" of its editors - there is none, and the article is studiously neutral about all the theories and debates that it describes. Thirdly, the article is fully cited to reliable sources. Fourthly, the topic is certainly notable. Fifthly, rhetoric like "nothing more than a worthless epithet invented by blank-slatists to discredit biological investigations" is inappropriate for a talk page; the "blank slate" is only tangentially relevant to this article, being mentioned in the cited summary of the "Nature and nurture" article, which seems to be the proper target of your comments; that debate is at most one aspect of the topic of this article here, which has a wider remit. Sixthly, much of this article necessarily concerns historical theories like Weismann's germ plasm and Galton's eugenics. These theories were important in their time; they are certainly relevant to the article's subject; they are neutrally described; and they are reliably cited. Seventhly, on "intertwining", it is certain that phenotype is determined by genetics + epigenetics + environment, so it's quite hard to see what your problem might be; other "intertwinings" include the obvious fact that epigenetic markers can only affect genes that are present, so for instance a deletion mutation could affect epigenetics, while in the other direction, an epigenetic marker can effectively silence a gene; other "intertwinings" can readily be identified. Finally, as for conflation and remarks about "predict all of behavior", the article does not say this; and much of the article is not even about behaviour. In short, your comments are "deeply flawed". Chiswick Chap (talk) 10:35, 28 August 2022 (UTC)