Why no "Philosophy of Society"?

[The Voice of Time]

I'd like to talk about societal topics that does not have a typical political meaning to it, that is: it's not politics.

However, no forums seem to fit! And General Discussion does not give justice to the broader topic of society. My topic, which I'll put in the "Philosophy of Mind" forum for now, is "The Resources of Other People". It really does not give justice to call it a Philosophy of Mind, however, that's the best place I can find for it, between casual General Discussion and Political Philosophy which both absolutely do not fit.

(alternatively, you could rename the political philosophy forum to "Philosophy of Politics and Society", like you named the forum "Logic and Philosophy of Mathematics", and while you're at it, rename Philosophy of Mind to "Philosophy of Mind and Human Nature", so that we have somewhere to discuss human nature, which is a big topic in philosophy, and last but not least: "Philosophy of Gender and Sex", as there's a lot of philosophy on sex)

[Impenitent]

multiculturalism

-Imp

[Arising_uk]

multiculturalism

-Imp

Pretty much a contradiction of terms.

[chasw]

A fascinating topic, VoT. One could describe it as the study of the human species, how did we get here, why do we behave the way we do - from a philosophical perspective of course. Think back almost a million years ago to our hominid ancestors, with their bipedalism and grasping forearms, living in social groups with language and primitive tools, including the ability to make fire. If they could survive, they were destined to create large cities with multitudes of individuals living in close proximity. That background influenced modern cultures and their underlying social philosophies.

Not sure if this topic amounts to a separate branch of philosophy, but if one is willing to include knowledge from anthropology, psychology, history, etc.; then there is much to be discussed and gained. See my blog onhumanaffairs at BlogSpot dot com for a more complete description of my current position.

Where do you stand on this topic? What is your preliminary philosophical account of human society and its behavior? I agree this should be something other than political science. thx - CW

[The Voice of Time]

Where do you stand on this topic? What is your preliminary philosophical account of human society and its behaviour?

Answer: society itself exists, as Durkheim noted, as a collection of humans and their relations to each other. I'm not very interested in society itself, so much as I'm interested in the Tren of societies, that is: an expanse of conditional structure that relates all human actions in the past and the present and the future through the creation and maintaining of cultural- and natural pipelines to a dynamic structure that ties and sticks together a fantazillion tiny pieces that many run through us humans all clinging to form a specific pattern that lasts.

To be more specific: I'm interested in a living pattern that stretches across society (but also outside it into nature and areas not covered by typical sociology) and is nourished and broken down by its members' (us humans) actions. I believe this pattern is more us than we ourselves are, and that we live to serve this pattern, as we are punished by causality when we don't (except of course, if the pattern has already lost us).

[chasw]

[quote="The Voice of Time...snip...I'm interested in the Tren (?) of societies, that is: an expanse of conditional structure that relates all human actions in the past and the present and the future through the creation and maintaining of cultural- and natural pipelines to a dynamic structure that ties and sticks together a fantazillion tiny pieces that many run through us humans all clinging to form a specific pattern that lasts.
...snip....[/quote]

Is it accurate to say you are searching for a theory of history, an account of the past and present that identifies trends extending into the future? - CW

[Arising_uk]

To be more specific: I'm interested in a living pattern that stretches across society (but also outside it into nature and areas not covered by typical sociology) and is nourished and broken down by its members' (us humans) actions. I believe this pattern is more us than we ourselves are, and that we live to serve this pattern, as we are punished by causality when we don't (except of course, if the pattern has already lost us).

You could do worse than start with Marx's Historical Materialism as your base.

[The Voice of Time]

Is it accurate to say you are searching for a theory of history, an account of the past and present that identifies trends extending into the future? - CW

No, not really, not a "theory of history", I'm against historicism (and to Arising_uk, I read Marx when I was something like 12 yo).

I should've been less vague with my use of the terms past, present and future. Past does not mean 1000 years ago (at least not necessarily, it could of course happen that we wanted to try and figure out how things went by and worked before we were around to see it, but that is another story). Instead, past mean things that we have observed in our lives before the present. Yesterday was in the past, so was last year.

I'm interested in the dynamics of structures of conditionality, how one structure of conditionality observed yesterday may move to change, in a restructure, in a decline, in a rise, and so forth, through the night and till the day today. This dynamic, that's what interests me, and in society at large, how the Tren of society moves about in its almost infinite-like stretch across it.

[Arising_uk]

No, not really, not a "theory of history", I'm against historicism (and to Arising_uk, I read Marx when I was something like 12 yo).

Maybe time to re-read with a more mature viewpoint then?

...
I'm interested in the dynamics of structures of conditionality, how one structure of conditionality observed yesterday may move to change, in a restructure, in a decline, in a rise, and so forth, through the night and till the day today. This dynamic, that's what interests me, and in society at large, how the Tren of society moves about in its almost infinite-like stretch across it.

Not so much vague as incomprehensible. Not saying it doesn't have meaning mind you, so what do you mean by "dynamics of structures of conditionality"? "structure of conditionality"? What "trend of society"?

[The Voice of Time]

I could write a book about it, and I intend to one day, maybe soon.

What "trend of society"?

I did not say it was a trend of society. In fact, I very specifically tried to convey I did not have a sociological and society-locked point of view, but society plays a significant role.

dynamics of structures of conditionality

One structure of conditionality is simply a graph displaying how some things serves as the conditions for other things. The graph I've created is found here: viewtopic.php?p=133004#p133004

The reason it's called a structure is because of the way it makes "levels" after levels, until it reaches the centre, which is the object of satisfaction, or the object of need. One such structure will change its interiors or entirely morph into a different setup of structure during the course of time. These are movements, and if one can keep track of the number of ways in which it will morph (though not interior changes, which can also be called "conditional depletion/adding"), will let you see patterns in which the presence of any object of need (a specific setup of a structure) in time is preserved for different moments, for then to perhaps vanish and then reappear again, and you'll be able to know typical movements that any specific object of need will make.

In society, or rather specifically the Tren of society, you'll see how all these things moves in uniform purpose (the preserving in given moments of time). It's like a thousand small images makes out one big image, in the similar way many people (living together) makes out a society.

There's lots more to say about it, but I'll leave it at that, to understand it you'd need to understand (my account of) the nature of needs and the universe which is another story...

[Arising_uk]

What do you me by "Tren of society"?

You say you are against historicism but your link appears to be a whole metaphysic attempting just that?

[The Voice of Time]

What do you me by "Tren of society"?

Ah, you thought I was misspelling a word ^^ I already said what in the following quote in this very thread:

I'm not very interested in society itself, so much as I'm interested in the Tren of societies, that is: an expanse of conditional structure that relates all human actions in the past and the present and the future through the creation and maintaining of cultural- and natural pipelines to a dynamic structure that ties and sticks together a fantazillion tiny pieces that many run through us humans all clinging to form a specific pattern that lasts.

The Tren of society is, very short (as opposed to what may be said about it in length), and I think I've already said it somehow: an Object of Need that incorporates all other Objects of Need that you find in a group of people sticking together and relate them and subject them to its own "Super-Object of Need" (this however, also includes extensions of those people, which may be animals or natural environments, which is why I say it's not restricted to members of a society). All individuals part of this Tren, the super-object, have a uniform target of perpetuating the super-object, and therefore all of its members.

(it works better as a concept when people "want" to be together, as opposed to just being together, where people may wilfully work against being together and therefore not really being together)

You say you are against historicism but your link appears to be a whole metaphysic attempting just that?

How? There's nothing in my link that suggests the subject of history has any relevance. You at miss what historicism is? I would be careful calling in metaphysics also, of course some of it is, there's kind-of a "story of the universe" in it, which serves as a metaphor to get at the important points, to develop in the reader the same understanding of time and change as I have, but most of it is fairly scientific and is much more a natural philosophy than it is any metaphysics.

[Arising_uk]

I'm not very interested in society itself, so much as I'm interested in the Tren of societies, that is: an expanse of conditional structure that relates all human actions in the past and the present and the future through the creation and maintaining of cultural- and natural pipelines to a dynamic structure that ties and sticks together a fantazillion tiny pieces that many run through us humans all clinging to form a specific pattern that lasts.

Can you give an example of such a thing?

The Tren of society is, very short (as opposed to what may be said about it in length), and I think I've already said it somehow: an Object of Need that incorporates all other Objects of Need that you find in a group of people sticking together and relate them and subject them to its own "Super-Object of Need" (this however, also includes extensions of those people, which may be animals or natural environments, which is why I say it's not restricted to members of a society). All individuals part of this Tren, the super-object, have a uniform target of perpetuating the super-object, and therefore all of its members.

So food would be such a thing?

How? There's nothing in my link that suggests the subject of history has any relevance. You at miss what historicism is? I would be careful calling in metaphysics also, of course some of it is, there's kind-of a "story of the universe" in it, which serves as a metaphor to get at the important points, to develop in the reader the same understanding of time and change as I have, but most of it is fairly scientific and is much more a natural philosophy than it is any metaphysics.

My apologies, I have misused "historicism" here.

[The Voice of Time]

Can you give an example of such a thing?

That would be problematic, because it's a bit like giving you an example of a flying space car, it's not that it's impossible ever, it's just not possible now. You first have to make it. And the same with a Tren, even if a Tren exists, you first have to connect pieces together to make it, and it would take a tremendous amount of time and work of enormously many people. So, I guess that even if it presumably exists, it's theoretical, a bit like Higg's Boson, which recently (maybe) was discovered to exist. It required a facility with thousands upon thousands of super-smart people to produce it, but at one time there sat a person who calculated that it must exist, to account for certain facts about the world. So maybe I should say why it must exist instead:

Given that "A" produce a reaction in the way of spawning a change (or a difference to that which is) somewhere (being the cause of one, so to speak). And given that this "B" will also be able to react, and therefore will have the same basic qualities as "A", you now have an incrementing chain of reaction spawn-sources of change (one spawn another to spawn a third), as well as a network ("A" continues to spawn after it has spawned "B"). Given that "A" can be silenced, or in other words stopped from reacting by any other reaction spawn-source of change, you get a chain which can abruptly silence parts of itself and therefore satisfy those same parts (as a network, children of "B" can satisfy "A" and other children of "A" than "B"). This chain and network makes out a Tren of sorts, but it doesn't fully become a Tren before you have human minds at the centre-piece. Human minds deciding the conditions for when something is to be satisfied (imagine having a dream about what to become for instance, or having a less sophisticated desire for things like food and sex). So, a Tren, while it starts definitely in humans (a term I use for such chains and networks is "World Worm", from the Norse mythology, because of the vague similarities between something that stretches across everything but from point to point, and a worm that constantly plunges into everything and as for every thing it eats it causes a change), while it starts definitely in humans, it is a perspective of a greater network that stretches across everything, it's kinda just a piece cut at the beginning of some human.

So, it has to exist because: 1) given that you can have such chains and networks, you already have to materials that makes it, and 2) it's a perspective, so it exists because you put a limit on the allness of everything to make a workable centre-piece of it, useful to yourself

So food would be such a thing?

Food would be something you'd see in a super-object of need yes, and in the smaller individual objects of need. It is important however that you understand they are not "the objects themselves", but conditions that ensure the perpetuation of the object of need, which, for instance, could be a human being.

[j9t]

For my understanding, where do you see the distinction between “Philosophy of Society” and fields like Social Sciences or Social Philosophy?