anon_fata said in #5347 6d ago:
I listened to the most recent 'The Students' episode with an interesting discussion on physis vs nomos.
I wanted to write my take on it. I dont think I'm breaking new ground here necessarily but maybe can lead to an interesting discussion.
As Samo Burja points out, large social organizations are to humans, what dams are to beavers and a strong distinction between nomos and physis can be misleading.
Large-scale institutions, moral codes, religions, taboos, censorship regimes, markets, and so on are social technologies produced by human nature under group-living conditions. Those technologies are then tested by cultural evolution. In a world of strong inter-polity competition, maladaptive systems are punished. In a world of weak competition, maladaptive systems can persist, producing decadence. These social technologies tend to have both a general and a particular component.
One more complication is that there seems to be a multi-level, almost fractal logic here. The nomos/physis relationship does not operate only at the level of the society. It recurs at multiple scales: individual, family, civilization etc.
Important to note here as noted in the podcast, that fitness is not the same as truth. A belief or taboo can be socially adaptive while being false, and a true belief can be socially destructive under some conditions. The natural follow up as Wolf notes, is there a possibility to create both a truth-seeking and socially fit ideology, particularly for western civilization? What does that look like?
I think I have a different answer. If we think of a 2x2 matrix: maybe we should say a philosopher’s job is to expose the hollow idols of society, to be concerned with truth as such; but a public intellectual should expose maladaptive hollow idols and try to spread adaptive truths, respect the adaptive myths/taboos, and refrain from the noble lie. Disciplined truth-telling with truth as both an end and a means.
I wanted to write my take on it. I dont think I'm breaking new ground here necessarily but maybe can lead to an interesting discussion.
As Samo Burja points out, large social organizations are to humans, what dams are to beavers and a strong distinction between nomos and physis can be misleading.
Large-scale institutions, moral codes, religions, taboos, censorship regimes, markets, and so on are social technologies produced by human nature under group-living conditions. Those technologies are then tested by cultural evolution. In a world of strong inter-polity competition, maladaptive systems are punished. In a world of weak competition, maladaptive systems can persist, producing decadence. These social technologies tend to have both a general and a particular component.
One more complication is that there seems to be a multi-level, almost fractal logic here. The nomos/physis relationship does not operate only at the level of the society. It recurs at multiple scales: individual, family, civilization etc.
Important to note here as noted in the podcast, that fitness is not the same as truth. A belief or taboo can be socially adaptive while being false, and a true belief can be socially destructive under some conditions. The natural follow up as Wolf notes, is there a possibility to create both a truth-seeking and socially fit ideology, particularly for western civilization? What does that look like?
I think I have a different answer. If we think of a 2x2 matrix: maybe we should say a philosopher’s job is to expose the hollow idols of society, to be concerned with truth as such; but a public intellectual should expose maladaptive hollow idols and try to spread adaptive truths, respect the adaptive myths/taboos, and refrain from the noble lie. Disciplined truth-telling with truth as both an end and a means.
I listened to the mo