UNDERSTANDING The ROOTS Of HUMAN BEHAVIOR, Notes on the Causality of Social Systems

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By: Will
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Wow -- this was a lot to digest in one reading. And one would certainly have to be "into" the material to enjoy or learn from it. However, when critiquing upon the effectiveness of the lesson, I would have to give it high marks. While at first the work seems wordy and complex, the sentences are quite simple and easy to comprehend, and the ideas become entertaining in themselves. There is good sentence flow, good word choices, and a great organization of ideas. I actually really enjoyed this work, especially the philosophical tone of the "river" section.

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UNDERSTANDING The ROOTS Of HUMAN BEHAVIOR, Notes on the Causality of Social Systems

By: Decon_WBB

Historians and social scientists deal with the who, what,

where, when how, and the whys of human societies. Inherent in

the why is the matter of human behavior. Therefore historical

and social sciences must ultimately address the question of

why, as a question of causality. Human behavior and only human

behavior causes social systems to form, evolve, and adapt. The

record of that process is called history. So the in the

broadest sense the Historical sciences must approach their

subject understanding the processes that create societies.

If we seek to understand humans in a global perspective,

we must understand the universal elements of human behavior.

This requires defining the causality of that behavior. For

some this is the most difficult of all scientific problems.

The basic question is, What is the nature of human nature? Are

we genetically programmed or free, or is it a case of being a

bit of both? It is basic in the social sciences that each

human, each culture, and each society is unique. It is a

staple in the classical physical sciences that it is the role

of science to study universal causalities and describe them as

laws. One school of classical science, assumed that since both

societies and humans are unique they could not be studied and

described as obeying universal natural laws. Thus, the social

sciences could not be true sciences. The other school tried to

find universal elements of human behavior in genomic control

of human behavior. This became the nature side of the

nature/nurture controversy. The posit is, genetically encoded

instincts force all animal behavior into specific responses to

stimuli. But analysis of specific individual responses to

specific stimuli reveals such a range of responses to any

specific stimuli that no specific underlying law could be

formulated.

Understanding human behavior in the social sciences

requires a synthesis of biosociological (nature) and

sociobiological (nurture) thinking. Human behavior is the

universal causality in social systems. That causality like

human behavior is chaotic, emergent, and nonlinear. There are

five primary areas of innate behavioral causalities which tie

human societies together. First we are a learning species.

When we do not learn due to injury, disease, or genetic

defect, we are classified as abnormal.

Second, we are a social species, and when

“normal” we innately socialize into and identify

with group behaviors. If we do not socialize into social

roles, we are treated as abnormal.

Third, the order in our social groups is maintained by

status hierarchies which are innate to social systems. In

hierarchies individuals strive for a level of status they find

psychologically comfortable. Learning through socialization

and achieving a comfortable position status are innate

behaviors driven by the learned values of a given

socialization pattern. And the values act as super-normal sign

stimuli for status questers who are blocked in their quest for

satisfactory social status.

The Third innate behavior is that we are a thinking

species. And in that thinking we engage meta cognitive

thinking about what we have learned, and about what we have

thought about what we have learned.

The open-innate interaction of learning, thinking,

socialization, and status questing drives all primary forms of

social causality. The open-innate drives are conditioned by a

need for social conduct, where there is no innately fixed

order of conduct to be learned. So societies form of the need

to adapt an survive in the given environment in which a group

finds itself. Primary status is derived from achieving the

most beneficial behavior within and for the society.

Hence both classical approaches to science revealed a

misunderstanding of what science is and what unique means as

well as a misunderstanding of the nature of natural laws as

fixed rather than as part of an adaptive system. The

deterministic philosophy of science still bedevil our

understanding of science is.

Chaos, Complexity and Emergent Systems

Chaos theory recognizes that all systems, both physical

and social, are unique within the boundaries of their

definitions as systems. However, once a system is defined as a

unique stable set of dynamic relationships, the fact of that

definition places the system into a taxonomic class of

phenomena which have common attributes. Those common

attributes are not unique. Thus they can constitute a

description of the universal principles behind that taxonomic

class of system's general behavior.

Since the behavior is nonlinear, however, one can only observe

what the behavior will likely be, but never predict it

exactly. This has been called sensitive dependence on initial

conditions.

But this description is itself flawed. In chaotic systems

there is an ongoing sensitivity to changing conditions. So to

be a system it must be self adaptive and  self organizing.

================

Since the time of the ancient Greeks it has been recognized

the change is part of all of nature. That was expressed then

as “You can never step into the same river twice.”

The flow of river itself was changed by the fact of your

stepping into it. And as the river flows the river bed

changes, be it by one grain of sand at a time. At each instant

of flow it is different. But while the system of the river

remains it a state of constant flux it is describable as a

system. It can flood, or shrink during droughts or seem to

remain steady for years. But at any one instant there can be

hundreds of changes happening. A beaver building a dam, the

water eroding the bank causing it or a tree on the bank to

topple into the river each event changes the river and its

history.

The a river, every system is subject to multiple ongoing

influences from events outside the system. But the

system’s self organization tends to maintain the system.

The river floods and cuts a new channel. It is still a river,

but it is changed. A river can completely abandon its channel

and direction of flow and so become a river with a different

mouth and even a different source. So the science of system

has to itself be dynamic enough to account for all the

variations that a system can display but still find the

fundamentals which constitutes the causality under which the

variations maintain themselves as a system.

Science's understanding of systems is complicated by

several factors. First is the phenomenon of chaos itself. The

theory holds that complex systems can emerge from chaos

without the event of an outside causality. The growth of

complexity itself creates new causalities. That is new levels

of causality form within complexity which lead to new levels

of organization that were not inherent in the individual

particles of the system.

Up quarks and down quarks have the inherent ability to

create neutrons and protons. But is the complexity of neutrons

and protons not that of the quarks that create simple atoms

like hydrogen and helium. Simple atoms themselves to not have

the inherent ability to create more complex atoms. That

causality comes from the effects of temperature and pressure

in stars. So each level of complexity has the possibility of

creating a new level of causality for the next level of self

organization.

For reactions to be Nonlinear means even with an

absolutely full set of data on the system at any given point,

it is not possible to say with absolution precision what the

next behavior of the system will be, because the next level

might create a new level of complexity. The next behavior can

be chaotic as a new form of system because the increased

complexity of chaotic systems creates nonlinear causalities

within themselves that are not predicable until the

causalities  appear.

But the new system itself will fall within a set of behavioral

dynamics which when understood will identify the system.

Comments

Will

Wow -- this was a lot to digest in one reading. And one would certainly have to be "into" the material to enjoy or learn from it. However, when critiquing upon the effectiveness of the lesson, I would have to give it high marks. While at first the work seems wordy and complex, the sentences are q...

October 2, 2014
·

RevJames

I use to take philosophy in college. You lost me in the neutrons and protons part. And the "causality" part is a little bit convoluted. But overall I got a lot out of it.

You need a comma on line 5 between when and how. Not sure about the word "is" on the end of line 75. There seems to be some...

October 2, 2014
·

UNDERSTANDING The ROOTS Of HUMAN BEHAVIOR, Notes on the Causality of Social Systems

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