Against Sociologism: naturalistic observations about an essay by Juan Manuel Iranzo

Abstract

According to the author of the essay (Iranzo, 2013), the most exceptional, defining and characteristic feature of the human nature is its symbolic capacity. This skill is an evolutionary development whose biological basis is a complex sociality that has fostered a big brain with enhanced capacities for multifunctional analysis and integration. Its social basis are chains of standardized, but potentially very open and flexible collective behaviors, the interaction rituals, where certain objects, mostly words, are collectively invested with meaning and an emotional charge, so that they become symbols and, by that very same process, become catalyzing elements of their instituting group identity, solidarity and moral and power order. Human species is inherently symbolic: collectively creates and transforms its collective universes and the dynamics of the semantic realm is autonomous. Our criticism focuses on three major themes. First, we discuss certain biological —bibliographical topics; second, we argue, against this sociologist view of interaction rituals, in favour of its indivisible biopsycho-social nature and, finally, we criticize, in a radical way, the so-called autonomy of the symbolic culture and its independence of any biopsychological determinations.