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2022 | Book

Problems of Complexity and Explanation in the Moral Sciences Read chapter Read first chapter

Retrieving Liberalism from Rationalist Constructivism, Volume II

Basics of a Liberal Psychological, Social and Moral Order

Author: Dr. Walter B. Weimer

Publisher: Springer International Publishing

Book Series : Palgrave Studies in Classical Liberalism

Part of: Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik" , Springer Professional "Wirtschaft"

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About this book

This second volume, Basics of a Liberal Psychological, Social and Moral Order, overviews developments in the theory of spontaneously ordered complex phenomena, the psychology of inference and expectation, the nature of anticipatory systems in the psychological and economic domains, and the evolution of scientific thought and knowledge. The book applies these insights to the nature of markets and morals, what education should consist of, and the problems of alienation and our existential malaise as we move into an increasingly abstract society. In doing so it also shows the unscientific nature of the rationalist constructivist approach of progressivism, and the disastrous consequences that would arise from following these positions.

The book shows the complex interplay between top-down or directed structures (what Hayek and others have called taxis organizations) and far more complex orders of the social or psychological cosmos in which they are embedded as constituents. It details how the key to the market orders of society depends upon their capacity to impersonally convey information to agents. Markets can serve unknown and unforeseen ends for individuals who do not know or have contact with other market participants. This is a vastly more powerful and productive system than anything that can arise in a tribal or face-to-face organization limited to personal contact, such as the sort proposed by the constructivists. The book will be of interest to academics and scholars in classical liberalism, economics and political philosophy.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter
Chapter 1. Problems of Complexity and Explanation in the Moral Sciences
Abstract
Understanding in psychological and social domains is different from classical accounts in the relatively simple physical domains, where we search for laws of nature, explanation of particulars (point predictions), and explanation as hypothetico-deductive inference from “covering” laws. The quest for an analogous “social physics” is chimerical: the essential complexity of the “moral sciences” requires explanation by rules governing behavior (not laws), explanation of the underlying principles rather than the indefinite particulars (models as abstract structures behind appearances), and an understanding of historical uniqueness in all living subjects (as opposed to timeless identical and interchangeable objects in physics). These domains are empirical, but not experimental—the mathematical and scaling properties which experimentation presupposes are not available. Spontaneous orders require study of the superior power of disequilibrating forces and negative rules of order as constraints, and giving up the quest for positive prescriptions of particulars.
Walter B. Weimer
Chapter 2. The Essential Evolutionary Tension: Cosmos + Taxis
Abstract
The inadequacy of taxis control systems (linear chains or hierarchical structures) to explain or replace spontaneously ordered complex systems (the CNS, social orders, or markets in economics) requires overviewing quantitatively and qualitatively more powerful control systems, such as Polanyi's polycentric orders and von Foerster's coalitional structures. This chapter highlights these control systems' capacities. It further outlines differences between simple physical systems and complex functional domains, and the duality of descriptions necessary to account for the creativity of complex living organisms and social phenomena. While spontaneous complex cosmic structures are made up of (often many) taxis control systems, it is not possible for taxis organization to substitute for polycentric or coalitional order. Constructivist “progressive” programs literally step backward to primitivism, and must inevitably be dictatorial control structures.
Walter B. Weimer
Chapter 3. Inference and Expectation
Abstract
Study of how we come to know—the nature of modeling and anticipation of our unpredictable, often dangerous environment—is the province of evolutionary epistemology. Constructivism depends upon knowledge being static or non-evolutionary and therefore cannot address the unforeseen and unknown in either our behavior or acquisition of knowledge. It has no anticipatory or feedforward mechanisms for the unanticipated. Likewise, constructivism has no mechanism for addressing error—either its detection or correction. Social or market orders (e.g., science) are sources of information used by agents to generate knowledge and to detect error. Trying to control science or the market by top-down intervention falsifies knowledge claims, fails to detect error, and reduces productivity in society. Socialism is not scientific, it kills inquiry by controlling its output.
Walter B. Weimer
Chapter 4. Markets and Morals
Abstract
The morality of the abstract market order is vastly superior to the face-to-face benevolence model of tribalism. Sound shocking? That’s because you are unfamiliar with abstract morality (and probably with what primitivism actually entails). Consumer-based morality is what you are used to and want, but producer-based morality from tribal organization is what your gut and ANS desire, because it is based on 200 million years of mammalian family evolution, while the abstract society has existed for less than 20,000 years. But your freedom of choice and the knowledge you possess depend upon the competitive market order. Unfamiliar? Challenging? Obviously wrong? Please read this chapter and see. It turns out that family structure (so despised by progressives) is the necessary bridge between the two moralities.
Walter B. Weimer
Chapter 5. Alienation, Malaise, and the Abstract Society
Abstract
This chapter overviews the breakdown of the closed society, which surrounds us in our ubiquitous alienation and malaise. Manifested in generational gaps and grasping for “system” by youth clamoring for friends in an impersonal city, and desperate for a new all knowing and powerful dictator to lead them, the appeal of socialism beckons those too young to know why it always fails. We need to learn coping strategies for our gut and ANS that do not depend upon the dictatorial strategies of therapy (especially behavioristic) and our dependence upon the medical model of cut it out or drug it into oblivion. We need instead to model therapy upon coaching to learn and improve life skills, such as agile thinking to increase our competence and confidence, and using our ANS instead of fearing and repressing it.
Walter B. Weimer
Chapter 6. Education in a Free Society
Abstract
Western education is a disaster. School districts have unlimited powers with no accountability. They dispense prepackaged “education” as anointed purveyors of truth, denying freedom of speech to all who disagree, in their “official” capacity as sainted book burners. Not subject to market based corrections, they are fiefdoms of momentary political correctness and socialist indoctrination centers. What would bring education back to accountability? Instituting market reforms: abolish or restrict tenure, allow freedom of choice to parents, students and faculty, and remove government intervention. Realize government sanctioned discrimination against the best (determined by grades, test scores and recommendations) is a cancer. Replace it with the search for new knowledge in an uncertain and hostile environment. Allow students to experience and then learn to overcome failure—do not teach Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood, where everyone is "equal" and always "special." Learn opinions are not knowledge, and entitlements are not "rights."
Walter B. Weimer
Chapter 7. Constructivism Within the Liberal Tradition
Abstract
As a variant of justificationism, constructivism in one form or another is found in both progressivists and defenders of classical liberal tenets. Adherence to explicit rationality and the “proving power of reason” characterizes views on the political right as well as left. Among the guilty are well-known defenders of one or another liberal principle(s), or theorists who “reduce” liberalism to one or another crucial principle at the expense of others. To previous criticism of the utilitarian misinterpretation of liberalism, this chapter adds discussion of libertarian views associated with followers of Mises’ praxeology as an updated form of Comtean “social physics,” views attempting to marry a “distribution principle” to liberal justice, and the inadequate “critical rationalism” approach of Popper and some followers, based upon an irrational faith in reason, or (like Feyerabend) assuming that the demise of that conception of rationality sanctions “anything goes” anarchism similar to Chomsky.
Walter B. Weimer
Chapter 8. Classical Liberalism Has yet to Be Either Achieved, Refuted, or Improved
Abstract
Liberalism has never flourished as a political doctrine. Whether it ever will is an empirical issue. This chapter recaps an essential context of interlocking constraints that are necessary for its survival, and notes how constructivists have failed to understand their necessity for a free society based on the rule of law. Tacit social orders can only be “improved” by slow, piecemeal changes whose results must be observed for unforeseen ill effects before more changes are (slowly) implemented. It is an empirical fact, for which more and more evidence accrues, that only market order competition can provide world wide peaceful cooperation. Even if that occurs we must face the fact that our primitive gut level emotionality will have to adapt to the impersonal abstract society.
Walter B. Weimer
Backmatter
Metadata
Title
Retrieving Liberalism from Rationalist Constructivism, Volume II
Author
Dr. Walter B. Weimer
Copyright Year
2022
Electronic ISBN
978-3-030-95477-2
Print ISBN
978-3-030-95476-5
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-95477-2