We attached a few texts as a starting point for the workshop:

The first is a short fragment from ‘Human Action’ by Ludwig von Mises in which we find a description of the classical anti-sociologic position – the idea that there is no social act independent of the individual’s desires/ wishes; society is only an association of individuals; it exists because collaboration and the division of labour is in everyone’s best interest.

The second text in the introduction to ‘Man and People’ , Ortega y Gasset’s meditation on the fundamentals of sociology. This text highlights the limits to Mises’ perspective and outlines the fact that, in order to avoid Durkheim mysticisms of a ‘social soul’, it is not necessary to adopt the extreme associationism proposed by Mises. There are social acts, like the way we greet each other, that cannot be reduced to the individual’s interests. Gasset’s key point is that social acts per se, which do not come down to individual interests under any circumstance, are absolutely irrational. The vast majority of habits fall into this category.

The third text, a fragment of the first chapter of Meme Machine by Susan Blackmore offers an explanation. How come there are so many irrational social acts? People imitate one another. The cultural items transmitted through imitation are called ‘meme’. The idea is that the utility of a meme (an idea, a fashion, a set of social norms, etc.), i.e. to the extent which it’s in the individuals’ interests, it’s only one of the factors that influence the ability of a meme to spread, to ‘infect’ the minds of people and to influence their behaviour.

The fourth text is a fragment from the chapter Redesigning Morality from ‘Darwin’s Dangerous Idea’ by Daniel Dennett. It shows why this is inevitable. The utopic ideal of perfect rationality is practically impossible, so all we can do sometimes is to imitate others, without knowing for sure that what we emulate is good. There’s a banal example to which there is no optimal rational solution – any solution is arguable. Such cases are in fact the norm.

The last text, the article „Better than Rational: Evolutionary Psychology and the Invisible Hand” written by Leda Cosmides and John Tooby, shows why the variability of culture is yet not unlimited. The same problem of the computational intractability emerges not only on a cultural level, but also biologically. A general, unbiased rationality would not be able to deal with concrete problems; it is for this reason that natural selection endowed us with specific cognitive mechanisms highly adapted to solving particular problems, including those in the social area. This means that, according to the context, we are genetically predisposed to become influenced by certain things and to prefer some things to others; not all memes have equal chances of spreading, though. There’s one more detail: the problems our brains are adapted to solving are current problems from the stone age! (Vlad Tarko presents)

Texts: Mises, Gasset, Blackmore, Dennet, Cosmides & Tooby.pdf