[From Bill Powers (950206.1600 MST)]
Bruce Nevin (Mon 93026 11:38:51 EST)--
The importance that mammals, at least, evidently attach to having
reliable relationships with their fellows suggests strongly that
intrinsic values of some reference perceptions are involved here.
It is worth thinking through carefully how perceptions of social
responsibility, reliability, interdependence, dependability, and so
on might arise. (Testing might be difficult.)
If these are intrinsic values for mammals, then all baby mammals would
be born having such values and nobody would have to teach the babies,
reward them, or punish them into having these values.
The fact that children (apparently) have to be taught so-called
responsibility is direct evidence that this and related concepts are not
products of evolution or inheritance. It tells us that responsibility
etc is a human invention, passed along and modified or reinvented by
each new generation, each new group within each new generation.
If we look at WHAT is taught, we find that some people want to control
others because of the effects others have on them, and in doing so they
employ all the methods of control that work. This includes reasoning,
persuasion, negotiation, demonstration, being an example, withholding
necessities until the desired behavior is seen (reward), and causing
intrinsic error until the desired behavior is seen (punishment). What
behavior is wanted from others is a highly individual matter and varies
radically across the population and even within so-called "groups."
People I am sure do use notions of (social) responsibility as a
smoke screen for their evasion of having to effect their own ends
by their own efforts, as you suggest, but the materials from which
they erect the smoke screen are socially available, known and
agreed to ahead of time by their fellows. If they simply made it
up in a novel way that had no connection with prior, known-to-be-
shared notions of social relations and expectations, no one would
have any particular reason to go along with it.
This idea of "shared notions of social relations and expectations" is a
myth. When we start using such terms, we have stopped speaking of
society and are speaking of the small part of it we have experienced and
from which we have drawn generalizations of dubious generality. Every
time we speak of what "people" do, we're speaking of people who live on
Park Avenue, in a Black or Jewish or Irish or Haitian ghetto, on Indian
reservations, in the Deep South, in igloos, at the edge of rice paddies,
and in jungles -- to mention a few places. We're speaking of people who
will grow up to be or already are criminals, judges, scientists,
sociologists, linguists, group leaders, loners, day laborers, explorers,
technicians, suicides, Republicans, Democrats, terrorists, Moslems,
generals of private armies, faith-healers, cops, preachers, cult
leaders, paid assassins, kings, and mathematicians.
What I've been trying to get across is that responsibility is whatever
you decide it is. It's like "family values," which are also whatever you
decide they are. There is nothing mysterious here, no mysterious forces
from evolution or "society" that lead us to adopt responsibilities or
values. There are only interactions with other people, other people who
have an incredible array of different desires and beliefs, other people
who always assume that THEIR concept of the good society and right
behavior toward others is the only one. Trying to generalize is
hopeless; inevitably it creates a parochial view of what "social
factors" are important.
What we need to understand is how people interact with the people around
them. We can't understand this by looking at any particular values,
beliefs, customs, rules, and so forth. Those are all happenstance and
could have come out completely different. The point is to explain how a
group of people arrive at equilibrium positions on various subjects like
family values or responsibility or religion. Doing this requires a
theory that doesn't take sides. If people do arrive at accomodations
with each other, it isn't because they inherit a tendency to do so, but
because of how living control systems work. And if the theory's any
good, it should work for a soldier of fortune just as well as for Albert
Schweitzer.
Your description sounds like a conspiracy of lazy con artists
against other more gullible individuals whom they exploit by
invoking social responsibilities. Was that what you intended, or
have I misunderstood?
Yes, lazy con artists and gullible individuals do exist and interact,
and PCT ought to be able to explain the interaction. But PCT also works
in cases where an adult decides that children ought to be responsible
for certain things like personal cleanliness, saying the proper prayers,
and sitting quietly in school, and in fact many children are
successfully taught these things. PCT has to explain that, too, as well
as the children who fail to go along with the teaching.
The moment you start trying to explain why taking certain
responsibilities and showing certain social behaviors is good and
natural, you've admitted that they are arbitrary. If they were
objectively good and natural, you wouldn't have to persuade anyone to go
along with them. The moment you start giving the reasons why some
particular behaviors are better than others, you have ceased to think as
a theoretician and are simply acting out your own reference levels.
You're just being an example of a person trying to change other people's
behavior to fit certain private goals.
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Best,
Bill P.