That's perfectly fine--I have other things I need to catch up on, too, and so I can't answer but sporadically. I apologize in advance for potentially taking a few days to get back to you on everything.
I'm just uncertain of what you mean by certain statements, such as 'Cognitive neuroscience and evolutionary psychology and projects like yours – "the oldest circuits of the human brain" and biological adaptation – are participating in, reinforcing, and reaffirming these same discourses."' As a doctor-in-training who may well pick neuro as her career later in life, statements like that disturb me, because they appear to paint the entire field with the same brush. Which, I'm almost sure, is not what you mean--but I don't know what you do mean, so I figured it'd be better to ask.
Similarly, I don't see how a "unified fabric of human desire" is necessarily Othering. I see how it can be used in that way, but I don't see how the thing in itself, das Ding an sich, would cause that. I personally believe (with room for tweaks and changes) that humans, overall, have evolved circuitry that is shared by most of the species, e.g. similar reward pathways for sex and violence which goes towards explaining why S&M is a desire-trigger for many people. Does that Other? I don't know.
Possibly I am missing Important Context here, that often happens to me. I know that historically, psychologists et al have used their position to fuck over queerfolk (homosexuality in the DSM, yes), but I...find that I can't agree with the position that, because of such events in the past, psych/neuropsych/evpsych/whatever must always be judged in that pre-existing context. So, although I have seen that these chaps are très creepy and are conducting bad science by manipulating data to agree with their hypotheses, it seems to me that they are being judged by actions of people previous as much as--or more than--on their own merits, and that is very disconcerting.
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Date: 2009-09-03 12:50 pm (UTC)I'm just uncertain of what you mean by certain statements, such as 'Cognitive neuroscience and evolutionary psychology and projects like yours – "the oldest circuits of the human brain" and biological adaptation – are participating in, reinforcing, and reaffirming these same discourses."' As a doctor-in-training who may well pick neuro as her career later in life, statements like that disturb me, because they appear to paint the entire field with the same brush. Which, I'm almost sure, is not what you mean--but I don't know what you do mean, so I figured it'd be better to ask.
Similarly, I don't see how a "unified fabric of human desire" is necessarily Othering. I see how it can be used in that way, but I don't see how the thing in itself, das Ding an sich, would cause that. I personally believe (with room for tweaks and changes) that humans, overall, have evolved circuitry that is shared by most of the species, e.g. similar reward pathways for sex and violence which goes towards explaining why S&M is a desire-trigger for many people. Does that Other? I don't know.
Possibly I am missing Important Context here, that often happens to me. I know that historically, psychologists et al have used their position to fuck over queerfolk (homosexuality in the DSM, yes), but I...find that I can't agree with the position that, because of such events in the past, psych/neuropsych/evpsych/whatever must always be judged in that pre-existing context. So, although I have seen that these chaps are très creepy and are conducting bad science by manipulating data to agree with their hypotheses, it seems to me that they are being judged by actions of people previous as much as--or more than--on their own merits, and that is very disconcerting.