One of the themes from the post on religion below is that institutions can profitably be regarded as evolved entities in their own right. This echoes group selection theory, but I don't really intend it that way. An evolutionary theory to account for modern human behavior needs to include the concept that individual humans are (or can be) members of several communities at once, which may have conflicting hierarchies. It is not clear to me that the usual formulations of group selection consider humans in this way. Besides which, the success of an institution is not necessarily linked to its ability to create copies of itself - often, stability over a long time period is intuitively a better measure of an institution's success. The generally declining marginal contribution of additional group members to group success (which is an assumption frequently made in economics to describe why firms eventually stop growing or shrinking) suggests that group selection theory must ultimately favor the creation of new groups. This is not necessarily true of institutions.
Institutions, to me, can be described more or less as basins of attraction. I say this with some reservation, because I'm not well enough versed in the mathematics to be precise. I understand a basin of attraction as a concept in dynamical systems, used to describe more-or-less regular trajectories through the space under consideration. For example, the trajectory of astronomical bodies (planets, stars, etc.) are well described by differential equations - astral body acceleration at any instant depends on the body's position and mass, and the position and mass of any other astral bodies nearby. Without getting too deep into it, this dependence of acceleration on the positions of several mobile bodies makes modeling the motion of the planets actually quite a bit more complex than one might naïvely expect (see the N-body problem for details). The orbits of the planets within the solar system are regular to the extent that they are caught within the solar system's basin of attraction. (I'm happy to be corrected on this.) Incidentally, "adaptive peaks" on Sewall Wright's "fitness landscape" are themselves essentially basins of attraction... As are other evolutionary scenarios, such as rock-paper-scissors games described by Maynard-Smith (in which an individual is committed to a strategy at birth - in this case, there is no ESS. nevertheless, the path through time is quite regular: scissors is replaced by rock is replaced by paper is replaced by scissors. I've wondered if this scenario perhaps accounts for nuptial-gift patterns in insects, which I may expand on later).
This sounds excessively complicated, it probably is excessively complicated. But that doesn't mean that this sort of thinking isn't useful. Ecology in general is considered by those who study it as a very complicated dynamic system. Adaptation is considered to follow a trajectory on a fitness landscape defined by the entities in the ecosphere, which is a very complicated beast. Studies of biological adaptation, however, greatly simplify this picture by considering a denuded subset of the ecosphere, and model but a few variables of interest.
What I am trying to get at can be expressed much more simply: a successful institution will select for (that is, recruit and/or develop) the individual or individuals best suited to carry out a role in that institution. The method of selection is a property of the institution, and of the available "talent pool", and will also reflect interactions with other institutions in the cultural web. Understanding the evolution of institutions is a question of how these institutions' mechanisms for selecting or cultivating new individuals in different roles change over time, and understanding the adaptations of institutions will mean describing the circumstances under which different forms of selection or cultivation tend to be more or less successful.
It's probably hubris, but I suspect that research following such a program would do better describing behavior on a global scale than any approach which treats institutions as mere epiphenomena.
I hope to unpack some of this discussion later.
Showing posts with label institutions. Show all posts
Showing posts with label institutions. Show all posts
Friday, April 18, 2008
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
Religion doesn't matter... (updated)
About a year ago, a grad student at my college gave a lecture for one of my classes in which she went over some of the scientific hypotheses proposed to account for why people have religion. At the beginning of the lecture, she described how there does not exist a commonly accepted definition of religion: every proposed definition had some significant problem she was able to point out with very little effort. As study of religion must include some conception of what religion is, this actually poses quite a problem for the discipline, which she side-stepped by focusing on phenomena agreed to be religious.
The fact that, in her preparation, she failed to discover a definition of religion that she found satisfying suggested to me that there was something seriously wrong in the approach of trying to account for religion, and that a different approach might be required.
Since that lecture, I've had reason to read more literature in the area, and there seems to be a pattern. When authors attempt to offer a definition of the term, they always seem much better at tearing down previous attempts than at constructing reliable definitions of their own. I'll quote Pascal Boyer,
One is left to wonder if there is anything considered universal across religions! Even the distinct concept of "religion" is not universally held, as it requires some understanding that there are different, incompatible, belief-systems. These difficulties notwithstanding, "religion" is still considered to play a direct and powerful role in most of the great undertakings of most or all human societies.
I am reminded of Popper's criticism of Marxism, which was related to his introduction of the doctrine of falsifiability. Popper noted that Marxists, when presented with evidence that contradicted the implications of their theory, were always quite ready to make post-hoc modifications to the theory so that it would fit the new data. It's worth noting that everyone probably does this, to an extent: new evidence much more often causes refinements to theory, rather than wholesale rejection. But when theory is usually incompatible with the results of observed phenomena at the time of observation, well, you can have...
...but the flaw in the theory is still there. At some point, it's best to forget your assumptions and try something else. The generally agreed importance of religion in human affairs is probably, at least partially, achieved by constraining the definition of religion so that it can always account for things of importance in human affairs. The accepted transcendent role of religion in the Christian cultures from which our current empirical scientific culture first became established (and, we should remember, the old Catholic Church in Europe used to have power to rival or exceed that of kings - the "transcendent" importance of religion may have followed from this) may have lead to the belief that religion everywhere is transcendentally important.
I want to end with the constructive point that we can still make major progress in understanding religious behavior. I suspect that the major redirection of effort involved will be to stop focusing on why people have religion, and start focusing on the structure of the religious institutions with which they interact. Answering questions about the role of ritual, generally, will help explain religious institutions, but can also help explain fraternity hazing, military cohesion, cooperation in athletics, etc. Understanding why people evangelize will help to understand many religions, but can also explain the invasiveness of neoliberal economic policy, or of advertising and marketing. [UPDATE 3/23/03:There is also a valid question about whether a single, general explanation for religion can account for people's susceptibility to religious ideology within all cultures.] There is so much more understanding we can gain if we stop accepting the framing that dictates that "religion" is what must be explained, as opposed to the structure of religious institutions and of people's behavior within them.
-l
The fact that, in her preparation, she failed to discover a definition of religion that she found satisfying suggested to me that there was something seriously wrong in the approach of trying to account for religion, and that a different approach might be required.
Since that lecture, I've had reason to read more literature in the area, and there seems to be a pattern. When authors attempt to offer a definition of the term, they always seem much better at tearing down previous attempts than at constructing reliable definitions of their own. I'll quote Pascal Boyer,
If people tell you "Religion is faith in a doctrine that teaches us how to save our souls by obeying a wise and eternal Creator of the universe," these people probably have not travelled or read widely enough. In many cultures people think the dead come back to haunt the living, but this is not universal. In some places people think that some special individuals can communicate with gods or dead people, but that idea is not found everywhere. In some places people assume that people have a soul that survives after death, but that assumption also is not universal. When we put forward general explanations of religion, we had better make sure that they apply outside our parish.(from Religion Explained)
One is left to wonder if there is anything considered universal across religions! Even the distinct concept of "religion" is not universally held, as it requires some understanding that there are different, incompatible, belief-systems. These difficulties notwithstanding, "religion" is still considered to play a direct and powerful role in most of the great undertakings of most or all human societies.
I am reminded of Popper's criticism of Marxism, which was related to his introduction of the doctrine of falsifiability. Popper noted that Marxists, when presented with evidence that contradicted the implications of their theory, were always quite ready to make post-hoc modifications to the theory so that it would fit the new data. It's worth noting that everyone probably does this, to an extent: new evidence much more often causes refinements to theory, rather than wholesale rejection. But when theory is usually incompatible with the results of observed phenomena at the time of observation, well, you can have...
This is the Turn of a Plausible Phrase(from The Space Child's Mother Goose, by Frederick Winsor)
That thickened the Erudite Verbal Haze
Cloaking Constant K
That save the Summary
Based on the Mummery
Hiding the Flaw
That lay in the Theory that Jack Built.
...but the flaw in the theory is still there. At some point, it's best to forget your assumptions and try something else. The generally agreed importance of religion in human affairs is probably, at least partially, achieved by constraining the definition of religion so that it can always account for things of importance in human affairs. The accepted transcendent role of religion in the Christian cultures from which our current empirical scientific culture first became established (and, we should remember, the old Catholic Church in Europe used to have power to rival or exceed that of kings - the "transcendent" importance of religion may have followed from this) may have lead to the belief that religion everywhere is transcendentally important.
I want to end with the constructive point that we can still make major progress in understanding religious behavior. I suspect that the major redirection of effort involved will be to stop focusing on why people have religion, and start focusing on the structure of the religious institutions with which they interact. Answering questions about the role of ritual, generally, will help explain religious institutions, but can also help explain fraternity hazing, military cohesion, cooperation in athletics, etc. Understanding why people evangelize will help to understand many religions, but can also explain the invasiveness of neoliberal economic policy, or of advertising and marketing. [UPDATE 3/23/03:There is also a valid question about whether a single, general explanation for religion can account for people's susceptibility to religious ideology within all cultures.] There is so much more understanding we can gain if we stop accepting the framing that dictates that "religion" is what must be explained, as opposed to the structure of religious institutions and of people's behavior within them.
-l
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