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Pitfalls of Social Evolutionism, Genuine and Spuriouscarter pate (CPATE@UTCVM.BITNET)Wed, 18 May 1994 16:22:44 EDT
I appreciate C. Pate's excellent point about the noting of long-term trends (evolution) not necessarily being teleological. I do not agree, however, when he goes on to decry the deterministic tenor of evolutionism. Even if the human will was in some meaningful sense "free" (which I have doubted deeply from the first time I ever thought seriously about it), what useful place can the assumption of free will have in scientific work? Someone raised the question whether I allow any room at all for choice. The answer is no. In response to my hypothesis that the idea of free will originated to rationalize credit--and especially blame, someone astutely suggested that maybe determinism orioginated to rationalize refusal to accept responsibility. Well, that makes good sense psychologically; but note that something's being a rationalization doesn't keep it from being true--or false, for that matter. The point about determinism is that it makes scientific sense, while free will does not. Thus, determinism has, in addition to its rationalizing function, a strong intellectual rationale; free willism, so far as I can tell, does not. Therefore I conclude that the origin and perpetuationof free willism are to be referred solely to its psycho-social rationalizing functions. Determinism is a strength rather than a weakness of evolutionism. When people mistake evolutionism to entail teleology, progress, moral improvement, or survival, the problem lies with them rather than with the concept of evolution. --Bob Graber ____________________________________(end of original)________________ Sorry, Bob, are we miscommunicating? I don't recall mentioning "free will." In fact, was I not decrying any blind tranfer of assumptions abiout bilogical evolution, although it may make a very persuasive metaphor describing some kinds of social and cultural change. Determinism is indeed easier to reconcile with organic and inorganic science than many less rigid principles. But are you using "determinism" in a very absolutist sense? I get the impression that even the "randomness" in genetic drift suggests that determinism in every detail cannot explain everything. I prefer a concept of social and cultural forces which exert varying pres- sures toward events. My ideas stem in part from Kurt Lewin's "force fields." I do recognize an idea of "overdeterminism" which I borrow from an ancient news paper column about the origins of WW II, where the author suggested that by mid-1938 (Munich) war in Europe was inevitable. But he certainly didn't mean it had to begin on Sept. 1, 1939. To me "free will" is an absolutist extreme in a religious or philosophical arg ument, which I'd rather lay aside from anthropological discourse. "Choice" allows a little more variation, and just like randomness, it might exercise a t iny bit of influence on events, especially if they are not overdetermined. But in social and cultural events, it seems to me that an insistence on "determinism" sounds like a blind insistence that everything can be reduced to a mathematical predictive formula. Don't we all know that's not very helpful in much of the cocio-cultural realm? THERE'S MORE IN THE MIDDLE OF THE ROAD THAN YELLOW STRIPES AND DEAD ARMADILLOS! Regards, cpate
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