Dragline wrote:
A society where people did not believe in each other's agency and act like they had it would not be a society of humans. Maybe they would be animals or computers or aliens or something else, but they would not be humans.
Ego said: I agree. We have to act as if we have agency to be a human among other humans.
AND By collectively pretending that agency exists we give society permission to punish transgressions and deter those with an inclination to transgress.
I would like to agree, because obviously this line of thought leads to the conclusion that old favored-socio-economic-racial-group high-IQ female citizens of affluent nations, such as myself, are the humanest humans because we are the least likely to transgress, unlike the sort of non-human-humans who need to have their ability to exhibit free will limited in the manner usually imposed on a vicious pit-bull (even though a pit-bull doesn't have free will?) In fact, I woke up this morning fretting about the fact that I might be in violation of the weed ordinance and felt compelled to go mow one of my lots. I wasn't even as concerned about the possibility of a ticket as much as I was compelled by some sort of total goody-two-shoes internal dialogue reminding me that I want to be part of the solution, not part of the problem etc. etc. etc. and I even picked up some litter that was not even litter that I littered too!!!
Unfortunately, I don't agree due to science. All social animals engage in behaviors that could be viewed as moral. Bruce Willis in some action movie fights against evil to save some children that are related to him. The Northern Mockingbird swoops down at my head aggressively as I hike down the path a bit too close to the nest of his young. Yay, Bruce, blow up those bad-uns!! Yay, Mockingbird, keep your nest safe from me!!
Also, I am having some difficulty figuring out how to reconcile the above with the fact that Homo Sapiens interbred with a number of other closely related species, and then likely contributed to their extinction, leaving a gap (temporary?) in what would otherwise be a smoother range of intelligent or simultaneous advanced brain and opposable thumb co-ordination behaviors. IOW, it seems to me that our shared delusion of being something more special or more moral (ha-ha-ha) than the other species we observe is due to the fact that we killed off all our closest competitors (after engaging in approximately 300 homo sapien male on neanderthal female matings resulting in offspring.) And, let's also not forget that 1 in 200 of us can sit smug in the moral superiority of knowing that we are directly descended from Genghis Khan. Yup, us humans are super-fantastic at surviving because we are so skilled at punishing transgressions.
My view of emergence which is based on the philosophy of perma-culture informs me that courtrooms and prisons are about as clever a way to deal with crime as Round-Up is a clever way to deal with a vigorous plant unconsciously acting in its own self-interest. I am hoping for, but not anticipating in my lifetime, some more better emergence.