About education and inequality. Even if we provide an education for all that want it, all the places we provide it won’t be the same. People are still going to fight over who gets into which one, aren’t they? I like that education section, it’s interesting to read about the upper-class students looking down on the others.
Looking at the question from the other side, scientists’ claim to some sort of absolute right to be able to investigate whatever they want looks a little more dubious when it rests on the retention of stolen property, and sacred property at that. I think many people would say your attitude is rather cavalier. Maybe some very old remains might be considered valuable enough and old enough not to be under their presumed descendants’ control. Others – for example, those taken from the Tasmanian aborigines – are comparatively recent. What would you say to someone who’d made off with your great grandmother’s bones and then tried to justify keeping them by claiming they were somehow the property of all humanity, and specifically of them, simply because there were things to be learnt from them? Do you think people will appreciate being effectively told that their culture is worthless and needs to be discarded in the interests of others’ knowledge? I can see where you’re coming from but I think your argument could do with being a little more nuanced.
The article cites the American experience of NAGPRA as a cautionary tale for the British. When NAGPRA was enacted, many American archaeologists expressed concerns similar to Jenkins’. However, a decade later perceptions have changed. NAGPRA was not nearly the blow to understanding of the past that it was predicted to be. In fact, in many cases archaeologists found they benefitted from repatriation because of the connections they developed with the bones’ descendants.
It is not neccessary to dig up the bones of our people to discover how they lived & when. A good Native study book will give you the same knowledge. To disturb the buried bones of our ancestors is desecration. The Spirit Journey is disrupted & the bones SHOULD BE LEFT WHERE THEY ARE FOUND !!!!
“Interviewers spoke with a former member of the sect, treating his exposition of that ridiculous position with the grave respect usually given to pronouncements by the Archbishop of Canterbury, or Mother Teresa, or the Pope.”
From a scientific perspective, all of these mythological systems have the same empirical and epistemological status–unproven and unprovable! So they deserve the same treatment–too bad that the superstitious approach gets the most respect.
Get a grip. As a proposal: If no-one alive today ever knew anyone who ever knew the deceased, then the bones are in the public domain – at least for scientific research. A lot of this stuff about the sacredness of ancestors is an expression of otherwise legitimate grievances in one of the only acceptable ways that our societies allow traditional societies to have power: towit the supposed special spiritual relationship they have with the land and their ancestors – however putative.
Re: Tiffany Jenkin’s don’t bury the bones. This is great stuff, I appreciate it. Now, I bet I can use a few words from the ‘dictionary’. I have read other such arguments, also from Britain, that also were factually wrong (Distance still affecting information flow? God, that might cause some sort of relativistic skewing of the relevance of ones perspective!). Kennewick Man was initially commented upon, casually, as resembling Caucasians. Upon more careful analysis the bones were determined to be more akin, but not an exact match to Ainu, an ancient group (race!) on the islands of Japan predating the Chinese migration there. In other words Asian, more possibly genetically related to Native Americans than “cauacasian”. But now we’re arguing on both sides of the fence and ripping our crotches on the dadgum barb’d wire. Race, an irrelevant and unscientific premise? Or, race, where we draw a line somewhere in the past to argue that the Indians have no rational reckoning of their biological or whatever connection to old bones?
Questions regarding Daniel Dennett’s article, “Postmodernism and truth”.
I have questions regarding the nature of scientific truth.
Is not all of science based on assumptions? Furthermore, these assumptions are untestable and consequently unprovable?
For example: science assumes that the laws of nature as we now see them have operated the same way throughout time and space; science assumes that the human mind is infinitely capable to perceive and understand nature; science assumes that there are no supernatural agents at work in nature; science assumes that the simplest explanation that accounts for the obsreved data is the correct one, et al.
So in the end does it not come down to each individual’s level of acceptance of these unprovable assumptions? If I accept the assumptions made by science as true then I should accept all the proven theories that rest on those assumptions. But if I doubt any of those assumptions, even if others do not, then I will doubt the theories that depend on them. Furthermore, any criticism from those who believe in the assumptions is futile as there is no way to obectively establish the truth of their belief or the falseness of mine.
I do believe in absolute truth apart from the perception of it, but I simply do not accept that science is the ultimate authority when it comes to knowing truth.
I am a complete outsider (a mere journalist/translator) in these matters and thought T. Jenkins’s article was thought provoking, well argued and unfashionable. But who is Ms Jenkins, does she have a background in anthropology and what is the grandiose- sounding Institute of Ideas?
On the current Bad Moves, ‘Can’t Do It? Don’t Back It’. Good stuff. I particularly liked this sentence: “But since when has unpleasantness been any kind of reliable moral barometer?”
It’s interesting to note that George W. Bush’s chair of the President’s Council on Bioethics, Leon Kass, believes in something called the ick factor, which flatly disagrees with the implication of Julian Baggini’s question. It is his position that one’s instinctive ‘ick’ reaction is indeed a reliable moral barometer. If you don’t believe me, just type ‘leon kass ick’ into Google and start reading…
About education and inequality. Even if we provide an education for all that want it, all the places we provide it won’t be the same. People are still going to fight over who gets into which one, aren’t they? I like that education section, it’s interesting to read about the upper-class students looking down on the others.
Ref. in Tiffany Jenkins’s “Don’t bury the Bones:” <>
Australian historians now disagree about the means (disease or massacre) but seem to agree no Tasmanian aboriginals lived into the 20th century.
Re: ‘Don’t bury the bones’
Looking at the question from the other side, scientists’ claim to some sort of absolute right to be able to investigate whatever they want looks a little more dubious when it rests on the retention of stolen property, and sacred property at that. I think many people would say your attitude is rather cavalier. Maybe some very old remains might be considered valuable enough and old enough not to be under their presumed descendants’ control. Others – for example, those taken from the Tasmanian aborigines – are comparatively recent. What would you say to someone who’d made off with your great grandmother’s bones and then tried to justify keeping them by claiming they were somehow the property of all humanity, and specifically of them, simply because there were things to be learnt from them? Do you think people will appreciate being effectively told that their culture is worthless and needs to be discarded in the interests of others’ knowledge? I can see where you’re coming from but I think your argument could do with being a little more nuanced.
Re: “Don’t Bury the Bones”
The article cites the American experience of NAGPRA as a cautionary tale for the British. When NAGPRA was enacted, many American archaeologists expressed concerns similar to Jenkins’. However, a decade later perceptions have changed. NAGPRA was not nearly the blow to understanding of the past that it was predicted to be. In fact, in many cases archaeologists found they benefitted from repatriation because of the connections they developed with the bones’ descendants.
It is not neccessary to dig up the bones of our people to discover how they lived & when. A good Native study book will give you the same knowledge. To disturb the buried bones of our ancestors is desecration. The Spirit Journey is disrupted & the bones SHOULD BE LEFT WHERE THEY ARE FOUND !!!!
Re Georgia’s comment
“Interviewers spoke with a former member of the sect, treating his exposition of that ridiculous position with the grave respect usually given to pronouncements by the Archbishop of Canterbury, or Mother Teresa, or the Pope.”
From a scientific perspective, all of these mythological systems have the same empirical and epistemological status–unproven and unprovable! So they deserve the same treatment–too bad that the superstitious approach gets the most respect.
Get a grip. As a proposal: If no-one alive today ever knew anyone who ever knew the deceased, then the bones are in the public domain – at least for scientific research. A lot of this stuff about the sacredness of ancestors is an expression of otherwise legitimate grievances in one of the only acceptable ways that our societies allow traditional societies to have power: towit the supposed special spiritual relationship they have with the land and their ancestors – however putative.
jrs
Re: Tiffany Jenkin’s don’t bury the bones. This is great stuff, I appreciate it. Now, I bet I can use a few words from the ‘dictionary’. I have read other such arguments, also from Britain, that also were factually wrong (Distance still affecting information flow? God, that might cause some sort of relativistic skewing of the relevance of ones perspective!). Kennewick Man was initially commented upon, casually, as resembling Caucasians. Upon more careful analysis the bones were determined to be more akin, but not an exact match to Ainu, an ancient group (race!) on the islands of Japan predating the Chinese migration there. In other words Asian, more possibly genetically related to Native Americans than “cauacasian”. But now we’re arguing on both sides of the fence and ripping our crotches on the dadgum barb’d wire. Race, an irrelevant and unscientific premise? Or, race, where we draw a line somewhere in the past to argue that the Indians have no rational reckoning of their biological or whatever connection to old bones?
Questions regarding Daniel Dennett’s article, “Postmodernism and truth”.
I have questions regarding the nature of scientific truth.
Is not all of science based on assumptions? Furthermore, these assumptions are untestable and consequently unprovable?
For example: science assumes that the laws of nature as we now see them have operated the same way throughout time and space; science assumes that the human mind is infinitely capable to perceive and understand nature; science assumes that there are no supernatural agents at work in nature; science assumes that the simplest explanation that accounts for the obsreved data is the correct one, et al.
So in the end does it not come down to each individual’s level of acceptance of these unprovable assumptions? If I accept the assumptions made by science as true then I should accept all the proven theories that rest on those assumptions. But if I doubt any of those assumptions, even if others do not, then I will doubt the theories that depend on them. Furthermore, any criticism from those who believe in the assumptions is futile as there is no way to obectively establish the truth of their belief or the falseness of mine.
I do believe in absolute truth apart from the perception of it, but I simply do not accept that science is the ultimate authority when it comes to knowing truth.
I am a complete outsider (a mere journalist/translator) in these matters and thought T. Jenkins’s article was thought provoking, well argued and unfashionable. But who is Ms Jenkins, does she have a background in anthropology and what is the grandiose- sounding Institute of Ideas?
On the current Bad Moves, ‘Can’t Do It? Don’t Back It’. Good stuff. I particularly liked this sentence: “But since when has unpleasantness been any kind of reliable moral barometer?”
It’s interesting to note that George W. Bush’s chair of the President’s Council on Bioethics, Leon Kass, believes in something called the ick factor, which flatly disagrees with the implication of Julian Baggini’s question. It is his position that one’s instinctive ‘ick’ reaction is indeed a reliable moral barometer. If you don’t believe me, just type ‘leon kass ick’ into Google and start reading…