It seems to me that this is an attempt to appeal to evolutionary psychology to explain a cultural phenomenon. Maybe I’m provincial in thinking that property rights are grounded in sociology rather than biology, but if they were grounded in biology I would expect to see fewer convergences when different ethnic groups participate in a mostly common culture but still select reproductive partners who share their background. I would also find it trivially likely that within only a generation or two, the distribution of viewpoints regarding property rights would shift dramatically, unless there was significant selection pressure.
However, if property rights are memetic and cultural, I would expect both convergences due to social interaction without gene mixing, and large shifts in the course of a single generation, or even in one person during their adult life.
A basic conception of property rights is probably genetic whereas specific property laws are cultural. This is similar to the way our capacity for language as well as certain language universals are genetic while languages themselves are cultural.
Where do you see variances in the basic conception of property rights vary as though genetic and not cultural? Do children born of people who have a different set of property values than those with whom they are raised have the concept of their genes or of the people who raised them?
Based on the developmental cognitive science literature, I’d say that a sense of property rights can’t develop until after the sense of other is developed. That means that most adopted children should develop the same concept of property rights as their family, if property rights are cultural.
I see different ideas of the basic concept of property rights when I look in the history of anthropology. Since those differences faded quickly during cultural interactions. From that I conclude that property rights divergently evolved, and subsequently converged, faster than genetic mechanisms would imply possible.
It seems to me that this is an attempt to appeal to evolutionary psychology to explain a cultural phenomenon. Maybe I’m provincial in thinking that property rights are grounded in sociology rather than biology, but if they were grounded in biology I would expect to see fewer convergences when different ethnic groups participate in a mostly common culture but still select reproductive partners who share their background. I would also find it trivially likely that within only a generation or two, the distribution of viewpoints regarding property rights would shift dramatically, unless there was significant selection pressure.
However, if property rights are memetic and cultural, I would expect both convergences due to social interaction without gene mixing, and large shifts in the course of a single generation, or even in one person during their adult life.
A basic conception of property rights is probably genetic whereas specific property laws are cultural. This is similar to the way our capacity for language as well as certain language universals are genetic while languages themselves are cultural.
Where do you see variances in the basic conception of property rights vary as though genetic and not cultural? Do children born of people who have a different set of property values than those with whom they are raised have the concept of their genes or of the people who raised them?
Based on the developmental cognitive science literature, I’d say that a sense of property rights can’t develop until after the sense of other is developed. That means that most adopted children should develop the same concept of property rights as their family, if property rights are cultural.
What does the evidence say?
I never said anything about variance. Due to the physiological unity of humankind there may not be very much variance in the genetic component.
Look at my analogy with language: people learn the language of their parents, but that doesn’t mean language ability has no genetic basis.
I see different ideas of the basic concept of property rights when I look in the history of anthropology. Since those differences faded quickly during cultural interactions. From that I conclude that property rights divergently evolved, and subsequently converged, faster than genetic mechanisms would imply possible.
Did you even read the comment you just replied to?