🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <56e8ed$3g6@staff.cs.su.oz.au>, danny@cs.su.oz.au (Danny) wrote:

: In article <dformosa.847942766@lancelot.st.nepean.uws.edu.au>,
: >I fave to dissagry with you there,  fundermentl means 'the simplest' that
: >wich can't be split.  communites are  made up of indervigules.  You can have
: >an indvagule without a communite (a hermit) but you can't have a community
: >without indvigulas.
: 
: In which case individuals are not fundamental either.  "Individuals
: are made up cells.  You can have a cell without an individual (amoeba)
: but you can't have an individual without cells."

: It always amazes me how reductionist biologists (who want to reduce
: all of ecology, embryology, and evolution to molecular genetics) get
: really upset if you use exactly the same arguments they use to argue
: for the reduction of *all* of biology to physics.  The same goes for
: proponents of methodological individualism in the social sciences -- 
: just watch them scream blue murder if you start reducing individuals!

By reductionist biologists I assume you mean the champions of the selfish
gene theory like Dawkins?  In biology there are eminent reasons for the
adoption of, as you put it, the reduction of all of "ecology, embryology
and evolution to molecular genetics", not the least of which is that it
eliminates pernicious ideas like group selection and allows for powerful
theoretical constructs like the extended phenotype.  Faced with this, I
don't understand your charge of "reductionism" and I'm not even sure the
word "reductionism" is meaningful.

I think you are committing the fallacy of composition.  In Dawkin's
theory, the fundamental unit is not a length of DNA, but a *replicator*. 
The *replicator* is the unit of selection, and it really is an irreducible
theoretical construct - on earth replicators take the form of lengths of
DNA, but in other situations it could be composed of clay, or silicon, or
electronic bits.  It's unimportant what the replicator is composed of,
indeed the concept of the replicator is independent of physics altogether.

In the same way, I'm not referring to the individual as a collection of
protein but as an *autonomous agent*.  As an autonomous agent, I think the
individual can rightly be considered the fundamental unit of society. 

: States and communities, like them or not, are real entities -- just
: like continental plates and oceanic trenches.

I'm not denying that or the existence of group processes.  But bear in
mind that they are built up from individuals interacting together.

What my view implies for a political philosophy is probably not all that
different from your own.  I, too, have an appreciation of the role
institutions and communities play in our lives, and that they can have
interests and norms. They are pretty much indispensible.  I am most
certainly not a libertarian in the sense it seems to get used nowadays.  

But what I'm asking for is serious consideration of what kinds of power
institutions and communities wield over us *as individuals*.  I'm not just
talking about government, I'm also talking about any institutionalised or
normative power structure - the church, your employer, your school, the
parent-teacher association, big business, your internet service provider -
whatever!  I don't like censorship precisely because it tries to deny this
individualism.

-- 
Jason Stokes: j.stokes@student.anu.edu.au