# On Human Existence as Entirely Social **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [April 29, 2005, 3:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-human-existence-as-entirely-social/301665 "2005-04-29T03:14:56Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Spatial\_Rift\_47](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a8b319/32.png) [@Spatial\_Rift\_47](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spatial_Rift_47)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2005, 3:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-human-existence-as-entirely-social/301665/1 "2005-04-29T03:14:56Z")
I was reading an excerpt from Sal Restivo’s The Sociological Worldview when a particular sentence, relatively unimportant compared the main points of the text, started a chain of thought in my head that epiphanically and dramatically increased my understanding of, well, the sociological worldview. The sentence says: “Religious specialists or virtuosos could, in the transcendental religions, devote themselves full time to the project of achieving salvation” (p 154). Immediately I conceptualized what such extreme devotion meant, and, placing myself in that role, I realized that personally (having the beliefs that I do now) I would have a hard time simply dismissing the current picture of the world as held by modern science. It was then that I realized that the very fact that I was evaluating the scenario based on the interaction between myself and a social institution indicated how much of the way I perceive the world is based on social considerations. ``` So, let’s take this to the extreme – every thought that every human being has ever had, is having, or ever will have is primarily influenced by social phenomena, and indeed does not make sense outside of the realm of social interaction. In fact, nothing does, because this extreme position postulates that we humans cannot know anything outside the realm of social interaction. Which in turn means that the only way for us to actually do something is to change our own mind or change other people’s minds. At first this seems to make no sense. Surely there are plenty of actions that I can take that will have a noteworthy effect on neither my opinions nor anyone else’s. My going down to the student union and getting a cup of coffee isn’t going to change what anyone thinks about anything. On the other hand, something like the sociological equivalent of the butterfly effect could occur: if someone in the student union happens to be just shy of starting a movement crusading against the over-reliance on caffeinated beverages in America, seeing me buy a cup could set them off. The movement could grow in power and influence and lead to widespread changes in American drinking habits. But this way lies madness, because surely sufficient imagination could postulate an absurd social effect for even the most mundane of actions. Which is exactly the missing piece – it is only those extremely mundane actions that require the more fantastic leaps of sociological imagination. Everything we can imagine doing that actually has a point or a purpose is social in nature. Let’s suppose I go out into the woods and I gather up whatever I can find, sticks, rocks, leaves, etc, and I make some object out of them. Obviously the shape of what I make can be attributed to my social background, but what of the effect of the act of making it? The structure wouldn’t last more than a day or two, so no one else would see it. The answer is in the sociological definition of self – that experience would be added to the sum of social forces that is me, causing me to exert subtly different social pressures on everyone around me. The obvious conclusion is that social reality is like the quantum foam, always bubbling with uncounted trillions of sub-sub-microsocial reactions that mostly cause nothing but occasionally are part of the uncounted billions of sub-microsocial trends, and so on. ``` What do you say, Dopers? Am I right about this? Search your own experiences, your own perceptions. Take a step back and analyze how you’re thinking about something - does it relate to how you will interact with someone else? Or am I just completely wrong? In other words, the debate is this: is human existence a completely social endeavor? ---
**Author:** ![SentientMeat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/43a26b/32.png) [@SentientMeat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SentientMeat)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2005, 8:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-human-existence-as-entirely-social/301665/2 "2005-04-29T08:37:19Z")
> [@](#): > > So, let’s take this to the extreme –– every thought that every human being has ever had, is having, or ever will have is primarily influenced by social phenomena, and indeed does not make sense outside of the realm of social interaction. OK, but let’s first sort out what a ‘thought’ _is_ in a cognitive sense, perhaps taking our vat-grown castaway on a well-stocked island as an example of one who has never had _any_ social contact with another human. Is a ‘thought’ a simple memory (visual, auditory, olfactory, tactile or some combination thereof)? The human brain is evolutionarily _built_ to remember: there would surely be no _neuroscientific variable_ or difference in the _cognitive apparatus_ which would have him recalling memories in any functionally different way. How about _combining or permuting_ those memories in a kind of mental Photoshop to form a “new thought” (_ie._ “imagination”)? Again, the cognitive modules are _the same_ as his womb-grown societal ancestors. So how about a thought as a _belief_, a computational **decision** output _in response to_ some combination of sensory inputs and memories (and perhaps even some _random_ element)? Again, those decision-making logical modules in the brain are _the same_ in functional equivalence. They work _statistically_, _ie._ based on the experience accrued over years from birth involving millions or billions of analysis, filtering and memory operations: one small difference in the sensory input isn’t going to suddenly output the decision “jump of the cliff” or “stay still for a fortnight”. We are all **biological machines**. A number of machines in communication is called a network. Society is the human network. Communications arriving at each individual machine can be analysed, filtered, stored, permuted, combined, deleted or passed on along the network, again in a _statistical_ manner: the effects of a single rather ordinary datum such as “building a crappy sculpture in the woods” are unlikely to be at all significant. The memories and beliefs in any given human network at a given time flourish, die or change in a **statistical** manner [remarkably similar](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memetics) to the individual machines themselves. And just like biological evolutionary environments, they are generally far more _stable_ than you are supposing. Human existence is not an _endeavour_, social or otherwise. I think the premise of the debate is rather a [category error](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category_mistake). ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2005, 8:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-human-existence-as-entirely-social/301665/3 "2005-04-29T08:45:31Z")
Dunno; someone espoused this idea in another thread a while back; for me, it just seems like the nature/nurture and freewill debates repackaged into a bunch of tautological or unfalsifiable statements; sure, maybe we do everything we do because society has programmed us that way; what is missing from the proposal is _how would we actually know if this was not the case_ - if society was nothing more than the emergent _result_ of our individual, free actions, or if society was partly programmed by us and we partly programmed by _it_, or if society was just an illusion manifest upon us by the pixies, _how would it be any different_? ---
**Author:** ![Spatial\_Rift\_47](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a8b319/32.png) [@Spatial\_Rift\_47](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spatial_Rift_47)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2005, 11:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-human-existence-as-entirely-social/301665/4 "2005-04-29T11:41:55Z")
Here we go with free will again. I was hoping this wouldn’t come up. Social free will is an illusion, and the argument for this is quite simple: Every action you take is constrained by the laws of thermodynamics. You, as a human being, are thermodynamically constrained. Is it so hard to believe that you are also socially constrained? > [@SentientMeat](#): > > one small difference in the sensory input isn’t going to suddenly output the decision “jump of the cliff” or “stay still for a fortnight”. You’re absolutely right, which is why I said in the OP that most such differences in the sensory input lead to nothing at all. > [@Mangetout](#): > > how would it be any different? That’s what I’m asking **you**. ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2005, 12:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-human-existence-as-entirely-social/301665/5 "2005-04-29T12:08:13Z")
In general, you could stick one arm as far down one of your pant legs as you can and hop everywhere you go. Outside of some people looking at you funny, it isn’t going to have any effect (or if so, only to brighten the lives for a moment of those about you.) The grand majority of everyone is reigned in by several layers of social pressure and having had their brains raised to mold to such a belief pattern. Minus sudden new discomfort, generally inertia will win regardless of the random individual excercising his creativity. ---
**Author:** ![SentientMeat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/43a26b/32.png) [@SentientMeat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SentientMeat)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2005, 12:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-human-existence-as-entirely-social/301665/6 "2005-04-29T12:25:44Z")
> [@](#): > > Social free will is an illusion … Is it so hard to believe that you are also socially constrained? What do you mean by this? Of course, _I_ believe that [all](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=291063) free will is something of an illusion, but you appear to be suggesting that it is **impossible** to output certain cognitive decisions because of the output of one or many other individuals. This is clearly false, since _innovation_ would thus be impossible. Society (_ie._ the “average” of other people’s outputs) provides _consequences_ which act as inputs into our decisions, with negative ones perhaps being interpretable as “constraints”. Nevertheless, one can still _accept_ those negative consequences and go right ahead and be _unconstrained_. You are putting the cart before the horse: humans exist, therefore society does. Not vice versa. If your argument is simply that social consequences _exist_, I trivially agree. ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2005, 1:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-human-existence-as-entirely-social/301665/7 "2005-04-29T13:16:28Z")
I’m not sure I quite get the op. We are social organisms. Our brains are evolved to help us exist as social organisms and to learn within a social context upon some prewired basic premises. Moreover we are part of a societal organism and our behaviors are functional and constrained by our place within that greater organism’s processes. So far so good. Is the op arguing for exernalism? Here I’d disagree. Thoughts and meanings are indeed inside our heads as we try to develop individual functional models to predict the world around us, a world that is primarily a social entity. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2005, 1:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-human-existence-as-entirely-social/301665/8 "2005-04-29T13:22:55Z")
> [@Spatial Rift 47](#): > > That’s what I’m asking **you**. Well, if you’re right, I had no choice but to ask; ball’s in your court matey. ---
**Author:** ![Spatial\_Rift\_47](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a8b319/32.png) [@Spatial\_Rift\_47](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spatial_Rift_47)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2005, 1:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-human-existence-as-entirely-social/301665/9 "2005-04-29T13:54:50Z")
First, **Mangetout** : In the interests of answering the question I raised in the OP, I’ll then ask you: what was the very heart of your motivation in asking me that question? Was it purely for your own enlightenment? Or did you do it for the sake of this discussion? I don’t think I need to specify which option supports my opinion. > [@SentientMeat](#): > > but you appear to be suggesting that it is **impossible** to output certain cognitive decisions because of the output of one or many other individuals. This is clearly false, since _innovation_ would thus be impossible. > Society (_ie._ the “average” of other people’s outputs) provides _consequences_ which act as inputs into our decisions, with negative ones perhaps being interpretable as “constraints”. Every action you take is influenced by the rules of the society in which you live. When I say “rules” I refer to social norms and stigma of all types, not just those set down in law or verbally spoken of - plenty of society’s norms remain unspoken decrees on how we should or should not behave. Just like the laws of thermodynamics, some of those rules simply more unlikely that you will take a given action, and some make it actually impossible. You’ll note that good examples of the latter are not easily conceived – I think that in and of itself supports the point I made in the OP, namely that we cannot concieve of anything outside our social realm. That said, here is one example: Suppose we take a fictional society, the Ilg, completely isolated from all other societies. The Ilg people speak Ilg. Now, an Ilg child is born. What is the probability that this child will learn to speak French? I can hear you protesting already. "But the question is trivial! The child has no access to French! " Which is _exactly_ my point. The Ilg child is constrained by the limits of the society he lives in, just as we all are. Innovation remains possible because there are certainly a great many social constraints that are not absolute, as this one is. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2005, 2:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-human-existence-as-entirely-social/301665/10 "2005-04-29T14:00:02Z")
There’s a difference between constraint and motivation though; I’m motivated to fly, but constrained to remain on the ground. ---
**Author:** ![SentientMeat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/43a26b/32.png) [@SentientMeat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SentientMeat)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2005, 2:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-human-existence-as-entirely-social/301665/11 "2005-04-29T14:01:45Z")
But physical (_eg._ thermodynamical) laws are _inviolate_: it is _impossible_ not to obey them. Social consequences are mere _regulations_ rather than inviolate laws - the equivalence is very poor. > [@](#): > > Innovation remains possible because there are certainly a great many social constraints that are not absolute, as this one is. So your OP is merely “social consequences exist”. Trivially true. ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2005, 2:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-human-existence-as-entirely-social/301665/12 "2005-04-29T14:30:52Z")
Of course social consequences are not inviolate laws, and social consequences are more than trivial items in cognition and behavior. That vat grown human could not have developed meaningful human cognition with his brain deprived of the social experiences his brain was prewired to expect to have to adapt to. This is a nonlinear relationship. We are adapting as best we can to an environment in that is most saliently social. We are simultaneously causing that very environment to change in reaction to us, in significant ways within our personal relationships, and in smaller ways in regards to the society as a whole. And the societal organism functions in a self-similar way to its component parts, so doing constraining the component parts in significant ways. Is free will an illusion? Maybe. It depends and how one (?chooses?) to look at it. If it is an illusion then it a necessary one for our computational processes to weigh the options and adapt. Heck all of my expereince of reality is an illusion, a trick of my perceptual processes interpreting some reality that I presume is out there on the other side of the curtain. But this is what I have to work with. I for one have reached the point where I think the issue of free will as real vs illusury is an uninteresting one. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2005, 2:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-human-existence-as-entirely-social/301665/13 "2005-04-29T14:53:58Z")
I think the _illusion_ of free will is illusory. ---
**Author:** ![Spatial\_Rift\_47](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a8b319/32.png) [@Spatial\_Rift\_47](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spatial_Rift_47)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2005, 3:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-human-existence-as-entirely-social/301665/14 "2005-04-29T15:01:19Z")
There are also a great many thermodynamical actions that are not absolutely impossible, only difficult for one reason or another. **SM** , the analogy is this: There is a physical process that would prevent me from violating the second law of thermodynamics, and there is a social process that would prevent me from unlearning some of the basic tenets of my society. _Both_ are inviolate. For example. In any society, as we go through childhood, we are taught the specific social norms of the society (wearing clothes, eating with utensils, showering, etc), but we are also taught how to learn new social norms as they change over time. The sociological term for this is that we internalize the behavior. The desire to go along with what society tells us to do becomes _part of us_. An equation: **SentientMeat** = **YoungSentientMeat** + solidarity, where solidarity is the bond you feel with others in your society. You are not who you once were, you changed as society changed. It is actually impossible for you to now go against that, just as it is impossible for me to decrease the entropy of the Universe. Indeed, the sociological perspective, and the one I find myself increasingly drawn to, is that there is no ‘self’ as we commonly see it. All we are as individuals, a sociologist will tell you, is a sum of the social forces that we have experienced to date. My quiestion as raised in the OP is, is the whole greater than the sum of the parts? I think **DSeid** may have just wrapped this up very neatly. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2005, 3:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-human-existence-as-entirely-social/301665/15 "2005-04-29T15:02:05Z")
At least I _think_ that’s what I think. ---
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2005, 3:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-human-existence-as-entirely-social/301665/16 "2005-04-29T15:53:11Z")
Actually, it isn’t impossible for people to act against social norms. People do it all the time. Have you ever heard of schizophrenia? Autism? MDMA? Charles Manson? Change someone’s brain, and suddenly the absolute social conditioning you postulate doesn’t exist any more. If we are all just programmed by society, how does that work? Where is society? What is it? Is it something more than the people I see around me? Either your point is trivially true: “People are influenced strongly by the actions of other people”, or it makes no sense. ---
**Author:** ![Spatial\_Rift\_47](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a8b319/32.png) [@Spatial\_Rift\_47](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spatial_Rift_47)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2005, 6:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-human-existence-as-entirely-social/301665/17 "2005-04-29T18:06:45Z")
You may be on to something there. I think the source of the confusion may be this: oftentimes, in fact very often, that strong social influence is obeyed so often that there isn’t statistically significant evidence of it being disobeyed, so it gets confused with an inviolate law. In other words, _technically_ it is possible to disobey all social norms, but for all intents and purposes it never happens. However, I still contend that there are SOME absolute social laws. ---
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2005, 7:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-human-existence-as-entirely-social/301665/18 "2005-04-29T19:53:51Z")
Wait, what are these unbreakable social laws? I can guarantee you that any unbreakable social law you mention I can find examples of people who break it regularly. Or I can argue that the law isn’t a social law, but rather a consequence of human anatomy and physiology. Men don’t wear dresses? You don’t punch your boss in the face? You don’t run nude down the street screaming obscenities in the middle of the night? You don’t drown your children in a bathtub? ---
**Author:** ![Spatial\_Rift\_47](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a8b319/32.png) [@Spatial\_Rift\_47](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spatial_Rift_47)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2005, 8:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-human-existence-as-entirely-social/301665/19 "2005-04-29T20:41:23Z")
Well, for example, see the hypothetical Ilg child scenario I outlined above. Modifying it so it applies to us is simple: What’s the probably that a human child will grow up speaking Xrygisian? ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2005, 10:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-human-existence-as-entirely-social/301665/20 "2005-04-29T22:09:39Z")
So there are a few choices that don’t appear on the menu; that means there are a few things that you probably _can’t_ do - that’s still a far cry from (what I understood to be) your original thesis, that we are just automatons carrying out the whim of some gestalt. So the child may not grow up to speak a language that it has no knowledge of, but it may grow up and decide not to speak, or perhaps it may grow up and say “fuck it, is this island _all there is_?” How does innovation/invention/discovery occur within your worldview? [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-human-existence-as-entirely-social/301665.md?page=2)