On Tue, 25 Sep 2001 15:03:50 -0400 "Nathan Newman" <nathan at newman.org>
writes:
> ----- Original Message -----
>
> Social science would love to reach the Newtonian conceit that if we
> could
> just understand the initial positions of each cosmic billiard ball,
> we could
> predict every future position and alignment of matter. But that
> conceit has
> failed in the face of quantum indeterminancy and complexity theory
> of
> shattered patterns.
Sorry but I am not persuaded by this. Having in another lifetime studied physics I fail to perceive the relevance of quantum indeterminacy to the issue at hand. I am quite aware that its relevance is often asserted but I have never found the arguments advanced to be persuasive. Also, complexity theory as I understand it does not deny the reality of causal determinism but rather implies that for chaotic systems, predictions of events from initial conditions become impossible.
>
> A good student of Durkheim will note that extreme conditions will
> make
> certain anti-social acts, from suicide to crime, more likely. Fair
> enough.
> But that is an analysis of irrationality being bred in extreme
> conditions,
> not of linking particular causes with particular effects.
Well Durkheim as a sociologist maintained that sociology is concerned with establishing causal explanations between social facts which he distinguished from individual behaviors. For Durkheim, an individual suicide or an individual crime was not a social fact and hence its explantion was not within the necessary purview of sociology but suicide rates and crime rates were and their explantions were to be within terms of other social facts. Hence, Justin's query of whether Nathan is suggesting that psychology may be more reevant to understanding the causes of certain extreme behaviors than sociology or whether Nathan is contending that such behaviors defy any possible causal explanation (whether sociological, psychological, or biological). If the latter then Nathan needs to offer us some some arguments to that effect.
>
> There is no explanation for any single act of irrationality or, to
> step away
> from Durkheim, evil that suddenly is unleashed at the extreme. Such
> acts of
> extreme irrational hatred and self-destruction are not within any
> rational
> calculus of likely cause and effect, of game theory, or any other
> approach
> to understanding particular conflict.
Does that mean that such acts are outside the realm of possible causal explanations or that merely sociology offers us only limited insights into their causes?
>
> There is not some continuum between protest rally and mass murder
> in
> understanding the escalation of conflict-- there are disjunctures
> where the
> bell curve of action jumps the tracks, crashes into chaos, and the
> actions
> we see in the world are irrational and unexplainable by any useful
> social
> science calculus.
>
> I insist on the word evil, much to Doug and yours chagrin, because
> it
> captures exactly the inexplicable nature of certain acts that go
> beyond the
> limits of the typical means-ends dillemmas we all face to a
> completely
> different realm outside normal human calculation of right and wrong
> acts.
This still looks more like theology rather than science to me. It is one thing to assert that we do not understand the causes of the aforementioned acts. It is another thing to assert that we cannot hope to understand their causes. I think that Nathan is engaging in mystification if not mysticism here.
>
> I am a rationalist but one who, through rational understanding,
> recognizes
> the limits of that very rationality. There are human acts that are
> unexplainable- we deal with them, we may even try to reduce the
> conditions
> of misery that increase the sum total of irrational extremes, but
> that does
> not mean there is any rational explanation of any particular act on
> that
> fringe, since the form it may take is chaotic and unknowable. Any
> nominal
> motives or explanations are merely gloss, like kids seizing on
> computer
> games or heavy metal music in clothing their school massacres.
My friend Tom Clark has a different take on these matters. See (http://world.std.com/~twc/letters.htm).
Jim F.
>
> Nathan Newman
>
>
>
>
>
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