Understanding Society
Microfoundations 2.0?
Daniel Little | Chancellor of the University of Michigan-Dearborn, Professor of Philosophy at UM-Dearborn and Professor of Sociology at UM-Ann Arbor
Saturday, August 1, 2015
Daniel Little — Microfoundations 2.0?
Understanding Society
Microfoundations 2.0?
Daniel Little | Chancellor of the University of Michigan-Dearborn, Professor of Philosophy at UM-Dearborn and Professor of Sociology at UM-Ann Arbor
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6 comments:
Models are necessarily "fictions" in the sense of being simplifications even complex ones. If they were precisely representational they would be replicas and not useful in explaining a body of information in terms of key factors that disregard that which is not relevant to the design purpose of the model.
Jason Smith put up an interesting post on modeling last week that looks at assuming complexity in econ and social science.
Assuming complexity?
Economists sometimes argue that if utilities cannot be aggregated, then there can be no representative agent. The questions that Little asks about history are what made me quit studying it (formally). I wonder if aggregate behaviour cannot be better explained by appeal to morphic resonance in human affairs? http://www.sheldrake.org/research/morphic-resonance
Morphic resonance has implications for behavioral emergence that suggest complexity. The future seems to be in information and information transfer. For example, it has been known for some time that emergence through natural selection operates one the basis of genetic information.
And equally that "cultural evolution" cannot be tied directly to natural selection. In that sense, some idea of morphic resonance both supports emergence through natural selection and serves as a counterpoint to it through the conditioning of behaviours/mimesis at another level. (Possibly.)
David Bohm attempted to ground this in what he called the "implicit order." The research was set forth in Michael Talbot's The Holographic Universe, which also considered the work of Karl Pribram. But that work is dated now. Lynne McTaggart updated it in The Field.
Reductionists look at it as quackery, but who knows, it may emerge as a new paradigm.
I am particularly interested in since it is congruent with perennial wisdom. So a scientific basis for it may be discovered in the current paradigm of normal science, or it may result in the emergence of a new paradigm as some think. I would not write this off as nonsense but I wouldn't rush in either.
As far as aggregation goes, it seems to be a matter of cultural change. The question is whether diffusion can account for it. Not that another factor might not also be involved. I have argued that wrt perennial wisdom. While diffusion can account for a lot of it, it doesn't seem to be able to account for all of it and perennial wisdom itself accounts for how it is possible.
It may be the same factor that is operative here.
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