Society and Ideology

Great Debates
1

In a state of nature, without society, all people have only natural freedom. Each may do as he pleases, restricted only by physical limitations and natural consequences. An individual does not have the natural freedom to do that which he is physically incapable of doing. One may annoy a grizzly; however, natural consequences will dictate that he will then become the bear’s lunch.

Individual human beings, however, are not particularly fit animals. Our musculature is weak and our natural armament (teeth and nails) poor. To survive and prosper, we must organize ourselves into societies: groups of people acting cooperatively to leverage our superior intelligence and memory. To cooperate, the members of a society must define and hold an ideology: a set of ideas held in common that further the cooperative effort of the group.

To qualify as an societal ideology, it must be held by all members of the society; to participate in the society, even a dissenter must exhibit at hypocritical adherence to its ideology. Of course there are ideas not held in common by all the members of a society; those ideas are by definition not part of that society’s ideology.

We can categorize an individual idea of an ideology by its effect on a natural freedom. An idea may either deny, protect or compel the expression of a natural freedom. We can assign certain words to categorize these ideas. An idea may define a protected freedom, one which an individual may not compel another to forego. An idea may define a right, which allows an individual to compel another to forgo a natural freedom. An idea may define a compulsion, which compels an individual to perform a certain action. An idea may be universal, applying to all members in a society, or it may define a privilege (lit. “private law”) applying only to certain indivuals, either specifically or to members of a sub-group.

Weight of numbers enforces the provisions of an ideology. In a primitive society, the dissenter is killed or exiled by the members themselves. In a more sophisticated society, correction or elimination of the dissenter is relegated to specialists (e.g. police, lawyers, judges, etc.). The ideology often places special compulsions and restrictions on the actions of these individuals and differentially protects certain freedoms.

In a primitive society, the ideology is informal, held in the minds of the individuals. In a more sophisticated society, the ideology is codified into a set of laws.

Societies evolve much as species evolve, through mutation and natural selection. Societies evolve must faster than do species, because ideas can propagate and “reproduce” faster than can genes. Early societies had very primitive ideologies, e.g. do what the big guy says. Since communication and ideological instability limit the size of a cooperative group, multiple societies will coexist. Since reproduction will increase the size of the overall population, individuals within a society and societies in physical proximity will compete for limited resources. Those societies that are most efficient at obtaining, creating and defending their resources will persist, those that are least efficient will perish.

On an emprical level, we have no basis for calling an ideology successful except my measuring its survivability. We can make empirical generalizations (political, sociological, and/or anthropolocial theories) by observing common ideas of past and present societal ideologies. The empirical study of ethics essentially attempts to discover what aspect of ideology enable or impair societal survival. Essentialy, such a paradigm defines an idea that contributes to societal survival as ethical and an idea that endangers or impairs survival as unethical.

2

Been reading Douglass North SingleDad? Or are you a Nobel laureate in waiting?

I agree with much of what you say, but would take issue with the following: The statements:

“To survive and prosper, we must organize ourselves into societies”

and

“In a state of nature, without society, all people have only natural freedom.”

are contradictory.

Given that we are evolved in the way we are, we are social animals by nature. Our ancestors did not wander around for a while until they figured out they’d do better working together.

If this is so, then there is no “natural freedom” in the sense you speak of.

I realise that this is ancillary to your argument, but it is worth pointing out, since some libertarians suggest that there was or could be a state in which “natural rights” might exist. Not so: man is evolved to be a social and political animal and any “rights” are conditioned on social structure.

Then we have:

No. Societies lack the mechanism for natural selection. There is no analogue of the genome which gets passed intact to subsequent generations. The surviving animal passes no experience to its offspring, just the brute fact of its reproductive success. Societies have history.

Nor do societies face selection pressure. Disfunctional societies can persist as long as they provide at least subsistance income.

Furthermore, consciousness allows societies to produce “hopeful monsters” - big, (individually) intended changes. Natural selection allows only mutation.

Finally:

No again, for two reasons. “Societal survival” is irrelevant if you accept that bad societies may survive. It is of course true to say that one of the conditions for a “good” social state is that it is sustainable, but this is a necessary but not a sufficient condition.

Secondly, the fact of a society’s survival does not make it “good”. Ethics come from value judgements, they cannot be made on facts (the “naturalistic fallacy”). What is “good” about it makes it “good”, nothing else.

picmr

3

SingleDad, I agree with you to a point, but empiricism and ideology have nothing to do with each other. Likewise, empiricism and ethics are exclusionary. Where empiricism is simply knowledge which is directly observable and is justified by the simple means of acquisition, a given ethos is justified by the ethos itself. It’s much like using induction to prove the continuing validity of induction, or a priori knowledge in the same fashion.

Do you maintain that an ideology is successful based on its survivability or the survival of the supporting society? Although an ideology or a particular society were to survive for some given duration, if it contradicts natural freedom an unbalanced system has been engendered. A balance must eventually be achieved. As debauched as an ideology may be, it is precisely the ideology with its intrinsic ethos that defines its own ethical basis.

4

picmr:

Who’s Douglass North?

You are correct, I misspoke. The phrase “state of nature” is misleading. Social organization obviously preceeds human intelligence. The sentence should read simply, “Without society, all people have only natural freedom.” I’m speaking of the entirely hypothetical state of no society with no agreements of social ideology. “Natural Freedom” is merely the collections of actions a person is physically capable of.

Again, I need to clarify. I erroneously use the term “societies” (specific collections of individuals) synonymously with with societal ideologies.

Ideologies do evolve due to mutation and natural selection. An ideology itself is an analog of the genome. A genome consists of genes, an ideology consists of ideas. Genes arise, change, and become extinct due to random physical events; ideas arise, change, and become extinct through human creativity. Ideologies reproduce themselves through communication; they acheive success or failure based on their acceptance in people’s minds, and the physical survival of those people.

Societal ideologies do indeed face selection pressure. Dysfunctional ideologies pass away as people change their thinking and accept new ideas. Nazism is a perfect example of an societal ideology that continues to be selected against, because it brought ruin and physical destruction of the vast majority of people who held it.

One must not carry an analogy too far. Mutation is clearly only random, ideas arise from human creativity. This is another reason that societal evolution proceeds much faster that genetic evolution.

But even “hopeful monsters” must pass the tests of general acceptance and societal survival. State communism is an excellent example of an ideology that failed the second test. Stalinist ideologies are becoming extinct as societies abandon them. because that ideology is failing to bring prosperity, and threatening the physical survival of those societies.

Can you offern an objective basis for dividing up survivable societal ideologies into “good” and “bad”? Had Nazism proven to be a sustainable, survivable society, they would be writing the ethical philosophy, and we would be holding anti-Semitism and similar ideas as “objective ethical good.”

The “naturalistic fallacy” is to take a specific feature of nature and elevate it to a basic principle. It’s not a fallacy to observe that ethical ideas persist based on their empirical contribution to the survival and prosperity of the societies that hold them. Just like history books, ethical philosophy is written by the winners.

Pure tautology. Actually, I think that most ethical philosophy is already based on the naturalistic fallacy: Persistent ethical ideas, because they are so good at ensuring survival and relative prosperity, become seen as objectively good in their own right.

Nen:

You’re arguing that the current conception of ethics is either tautological or entirely circular, and thus intellectually bankrupt. A method of basing the evaluation of ethics on an empirical basis of contribution to survival and prosperity is thus all the more necessary.

5

Excuse me, but you don’t need a shared ideology to cooperate or to have a shared society. Every day I cooperate with lots of people who don’t share my points of view. The society I live in has no universally shared ideology. Could you please clarify what you mean?

6

matt_mcl:

But you do share an societal ideology (a set of ideas relating to your behavior):

Murder is wrong
Theft is wrong
Whacking somebody upside the head with a 2x4 because they annoy you is wrong.
You must give someone the money when they give you the hamburger.

In a sophisticated society such as Canada, much of the ideology is codified into law.

7

That’s not ideology; you can agree or disagree with those things as you choose, as long as you don’t violate them in action. An ideology is violated simply by disagreeing with it.

8

SingleDad: North is a Nobel prize winner in economics who reintroduced the concept of ideology into mainstream economics. North, D.C. (1990) Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance is probably his best known piece.

On the matter of societies evolving, I think we agree on everything except the use of the term. I am of the view that even though there may be change and feedback in society, that this is sufficiently different from mutation and selection in individual organisms to make it misleading to draw the analogy.
I think we also disagree on terms only about the ethics business. You talk of objective ethics. I would deny that there could be such a thing.

However if you mean this in the sense of “what people think or act as if they believe is right” rather than what is right, then I agree.

picmr

9

SingleDad:

You replied:

Yes, I believe any given ethos is self-serving and self-supporting. An ethos may be implemented under the pretense of being beneficial to society, but it is intellectually corrupt.

Thou shall not kill.
Why shouldn’t I kill?
Killing is detremental to society.
Why is killing detremental to society?
Because killing is bad.
Why is killing bad?
Um, because, um…

Any number of arguments and questions can be inserted into the above discussion; however, the end point is the same. The premise and conclusion are identical. It’s not a logically valid argument. Despite the fact that there are superficial reasons, there is no reason in the endgame. I agree that an empirical evaluation of ethics is desirable, but the benefit of an ideology to a society cannot be empirically measured and then appraised ethically.

10

matt_mcl:

An invividual may disagree with parts of an ideology, but it is consensus which holds it in place.

11

matt_mcl:

I think I’m using the term pretty much in accordance with all the variants meaning 2 above.

Laws, and ethics form a set of ideas that people use to regulate interaction. Perhaps “agree” is the wrong word; it might be better to say that one must conform to the ideology. Modern democratic ideologies make the distiction between expressing verbal disagreement and failing to conform one’s behavior. But that is a feature of the ideology itself; many ideologies prohibit even verbal disagreement.

picmr:

I think the denotation of “relatively peaceful” development given in the dictionary defintion refers to older evolutionary theories in which dramatic change was not included; current theories of evolution include the dramatic, “revolutionary” changes of punctuated equilibrium.

There are enough parallels between ideological change and genetic evolution to make the analogy useful:

In genetic evolution, the genome as a whole evolves by the addition, subtraction and modification of genes. In ideological evolution, the ideology as a whole evolves by the same changes in individual ideas, also called “memes”.

In genetic evolution, there is a progression from simpler forms to more complex forms. The same progression can be seen in ideological evolution.

In genetic evolution, genetic modifications arise spontaneously, and are then tested against reality. A surviving genome must not violate intrinsic biochemical self-consistency (i.e. it must not contain an active code for a lethal chemical, nor must it omit a needed chemical). To survive in active form for very long, it must also code for a objectively useful feature that allows its species to obtain an advantage over its competitors.

Likewise, in ideological evolution, new ideas arise spontaneiously and are then tested against reality. A surviving idea must not violate intrinsic self-consistency (i.e. it must not cause cognitive dissonnance or immediately self-destructive behavior), and to survive in active form it must prompt objectively useful behavior that allows its society to obtain an advantage over its competitors.

Genetic evolution depends not on they physical survival of an organism but its reproductive success. Genomes die out not because its organism can’t sustain itself, but because it can’t reproduce itself.

A society is more like a species than an organism. Ideologies die out when the parents can’t induce their offspring to accept the ideas, not because the parents can’t physically reproduce.

Give the above, ideological evolution seems a powerful and useful concept for assigning an empirical basis to ethical philosophy.

12

-John Ralston Saul, The Doubter’s Companion

13

matt_mcl: Obviously, JRS and I are talking about two different things. Ideology has obviously become too semantically confused to be a good term. I welcome your assistance on choosing a better, more unambiguous term.

14

Sorry SingleDad I’m going to quibble again.

I don’t think so: there is no “progress” inherent in natural selection. Complex organisms are not better than simple ones. If they survive, they survive.

I’m prepared to but Dawkins’ meme idea, but I wouldn’t want to push it very far in the absence of a specific mechanism for intact replication and mutation.

picmr

15

Well evolution has the effect of producing more complex forms. Such an effect is obviously not inherent in the process but emerges from it.

The point is not to claim an equivalence or identity between genetic and idea-based evolution (as in black hold event horizon area and entropy), but to claim an analogy. The primary goal of the analogy is to reference not the replication mechanism but the selection mechanism. Ideas persist if they are effective at promoting social survival.

16

Depending on what you are referring to exactly, I would say something like ‘ethos’ (feeling of the society, zeitgeist) or ‘social ethics’ (common set of rules by which people interact, as distinct from personal ethics).

Many societies do indeed have a shared ideology; their citizens are usually obsessed with spying on one another to make sure that they believe the ideology, and arguing that this and that is un-whatever (mentioning no names…)

17

I agree, but if you changed this to societies’ survival, I’d disagree again. (Sorry to keep doing this, but hey, you keep posting interesting stuff).

Ideas can persist only if they serve at least some part of society’s interests, but I suspect this is not what you meant.

I would deny that institutional change works like this. I think successful institutions atrophy rather than reproduce, and that the competition between ideas does not necessarily go to the better system.

Bacteria would disagree, and so far they are alot more successful than us, both in number and probable longevity.

picmr

18

I would say that “social survival” and "societys’ survival are equivalent. We’ll talk about an idea that survives the first test I mentioned earlier: It don’t cause an individual to immediately reject it, nor does it cause the individual’s immediate destruction.

The idea propagates to a large enough number of individuals that it gains wide enough acceptance to form a basis for individuals to judge and coerce each other’s behavior: It has entered the zeitgeist. At that point the second test will then apply: Can the society that now holds that idea survive and prosper?

Violent nationalism is a perfect example of a destructive idea: the societies that held it as part of its zeitgeist did not survive; the societies that did survive did so because they eliminated the idea.

This is one of the areas, of course, in which the strict analogy between genetic evolution and the evolution of idea sets diverge. An organism cannot “reject” a specific gene if it believes that gene to be detrimental. But analogy of the concept of evaluating the idea or the idea set against its physical success in a competitive environment does still hold.

They would disagree only if we called “more complex” equivalent to “better”.

19

I don’t understand what you mean by this. The point I was trying to make is that there is no theoretical or empirical grounds to suggest that evolution tends to produce more complex forms (beyond the initial adoption of the phenotype).

You are optimistic about the demise of violent nationalism. I think is not dead, can grow strong again, and if it does, there is no reason to suppose that it will be defeated.

picmr

20

SingleDad said:

Now, I wouldn’t go that far. As long as it only applied to me (doing the whacking, that is), of course. :slight_smile:

Picmr: SingleDad is right about evolution producing more complex forms. Your example of bacteria is correct in that they are “successful,” but they have also not evolved a whole hell of a lot in the past few million years. A species can be successful without evolving, if they have a good niche and nothing happens to take it away. But evolution, as a whole, does indeed predict increasing complexity. Niles Eldredge uses this very prediction as major support of evolution against creationist attack in his new book, The Triumph of Evolution and the Failure of Creationism. You can see that the prediction holds true by looking at the fossil record.