From: Grant Callaghan (grantc4@hotmail.com)
Date: Sun 01 Dec 2002 - 02:51:19 GMT
From an article by Mark Turner of UMD
CULTURE VERSUS BIOLOGY
A view of the nature and ontogenesis of meaning as ineradicably embodied
would blur in two profound ways the distinction between culture and biology,
requiring us to cross this distinction off our list of respectable
conceptual instruments. The first blurring is now apparent: if meaning is
structured and guided by the mapping of the body in the brain, then it is
not possible to separate human culture from human bodies. Culture is
patterns of activity in brains; brains are structured in accord with their
bodies; therefore culture, which is activity in brains, is structured in
accord with the bodies in which it resides. Conversely, brains are in
various ways developed under cultural experience, such as experience of
language. A certain amount of our actual neurobiology is inseparable from
culture.
The second blurring is equally evident, having to do not with the mapping of
the body in the brain but simply with the fact that the instantiation of
culture can only be neurobiological. Meanings reside in the brain. Imagine
you are microscopic and inside a brain, gazing about, trying to distinguish
between biology and culture. You could not meaningfully point to one synapse
and say, "see that, that's biology," and then point to a different synapse
and say, "see that, that's culture." It's an absurd and untenable
distinction. To the extent that there is culture, it just is neurobiology;
it just consists of neurobiological events and structures. If, while you are
in miniature and touring the brain, you observed some neurobiological
activity involved in, say, language, you could not say in a meaningful
fashion, "see that, it's just biology, culture is not involved." At the
level of what exists, culture cannot be distinguished from neurobiology.
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