Intro:
I sat a collage of texts as a basis for the Workshop:
The first text is a brief excerpt from Human Action by Ludwig von Mises in which is described the anti-crisis classical sociological position-the idea that there is no social fact irreducible to the wishes of individuals; the company is just an Association of individuals; It exists because the collaboration and Division of labour is in everyone's interest.
The second text is the introduction to the man and the crowd, "meditation" of Ortega y Gasset upon foundations of sociology. This text identifies the limits of Mises ' perspective and look like to avoid misticismele Durkheimiene about "soul", it is not necessary to adopt asociationismul of Mises. There are social phenomena, such as the way we greet you, which cannot be reduced to the interests of individuals. The essential idea is that the social facts Gasset per se, irreducible to invididuale interests, are essentially irrational. And the vast majority of dietary habits are still in this situation.
Third text, an excerpt from the first chapter of the Meme Machine by Susan Blackmore, offers an explanation. How there's also irrational social phenomena? People imitate each other. Cultural items which are transmitted through the imitation are termed "meme". And the idea is that the usefulness of a meme (an idea, mode, a set of social rules, etc.), i.e. to what extent it is in the interest of individuals, is the only one of the factors that influence the ability to spread to Subash, to "infect" people's minds and influence behavior.
The fourth story, an excerpt from the chapter "Redisigning Morality" in Darwin's Dangerous Idea by Daniel Dennett, shows why this is inevitable. The utopian ideal of perfect rationality is simply out of practicality so often all we can do is to dump each other, without having to know for sure if what is good dump. An extreme example is given by the simple in that there's no rational and optimal solution-any solution is contestabila for good reason. Such cases are actually the norm.
Last text, the article "Better than Rational: Evolutionary Psychology and the Invisible Hand" by Leda Cosmides and John Tairi, look like what the variability is not unlimited, however culture. Same problem of computational complexity intractabile appears not only at the level of culture, but also from the biological level. A general, unbiased rationality, couldn't cope with the concrete problems; This is why natural selection has equipped us with cognitive mechanisms specific to solving particular problems, including social area. This means that, depending on the context, we are genetically predisposed to leave us influenced by certain things and to have certain preferences rather than others; not all memes have equal chances to spread. There is one small detail: the problems that our brain is tailored to solve current problems are from the stone age! (Presents: Bobby Van)
The collage of texts:
