I had a very interesting conversation a while ago with a member of the community. It primarily covered the nature by which we seek out and reinforce relationships within the fabric of wants; he, professing an attitude which sought to reduce complexity, to build upon our intuitions which are useful in building rapport with others, could be seen as a refinement of our intuition; to do away with harmful assumptions which may beleaguer our capacity to form any meaningful connection with others. To accord only a modest amount of power to the intellect in judging whether or not any particular relationship is fruitful, if you will. It is not a matter of doing away with intellect, but avoiding those cheap solecisms that are caused by conflicting interests, of which are indicative of what how this particular relationship ought to obtain.
I can understand this point somewhat, as we might falsely operate within the constraints of wants which might be mischaracterisations of our behaviour. We are wont to assign value to those impulses which occlude our social intuition, and thus might be particularly harmful in actually integrating into a society which hold none of the same wants, or at least, wants which can never be confirmed empirically. In other words, to never other-think and out-step the natural boundaries imposed by our social circles.
I think in order to understand this, we must distinguish between dependent and independent wants. I perceive that dependent wants are those which require some shared understanding of transaction; specifically, attitudes which are assumed shared, always providing an estimate for local and, perhaps, arbitrarily met conditions for social normativity. And this provides us with a blueprint on how to form relationships. We are expected to receive as much as we are willing to give. It would be more accurate perhaps to classify them as being either global or local. Dependent wants which are global consist of attitudes inherited, and thus consanguineous, with a social apparatus, ab ovo, a particular normative model for which we are taught to assess in relation to how it may obtain in the future. We are taught to steer clear from bad crowds, insofar as society is taught to diminish their value.
Dependent wants which are local are characteristic of smaller communities, and are consequently reflective of attitudes inherited from the needs of the particular community, more often than not the microcosm, which players find themselves in. Local wants predicate a particular brand of moralism, whilst global wants are conflated with human nature. This is also why the model of the nuclear family works so well in Western society; it is, contrary to common sentiment, not indicative of the values of a particular microcosm, like rural communities with an almost theophanic relationship to God, but of the underlying structure of all communities; we don't consider communities as autonomous entities, but networks of people consigned to the rules of the game, a universal concept.
Now independent wants are, in some sense, local dependent wants, the difference being the removal of transaction in favour of according import to our desires. The desire to have ones social circle reflect his own interests, or to be integrated into the intelligentsia, the literati or aristocracy. They are wants which are not understood by virtue of their particular relationship to the wider social circle. Imagine a graph of a community, where each member represents a particular node, taking on weighted values, and are connected by functional connections. In some sense we can think of these members as represented by something qualitatively similar to an Erdos number. I perceive that these functional connections are predicated on local dependencies; in order to build up your network, you must try to meet certain standards of adequacy in maintaining relationships; relationships which are stronger require more effort, and those which we may call acquaintance-ships require a minimal amount of effort, though these will consequently obtain minimally. If we wanted to be really precise, we could try to assign value to things like time invested, stability (changes in functional connections), some measure of happiness in proximity to a particular person, etc., of which I won't do, since the aim of this graph is didactic by nature. The point is that all we have done are model connections based on certain constraints, of which are seen in observable occurrences. The means by which we extract the most utility from these relationships is one which is embedded into our graph; we can consider this a generative algorithm of sorts. Wants do not need to be explicated in order to be properly understood within these constraints.
So, if these functional connections are dependencies, we would find it very trifling to try to model independent wants. I consider these nomological danglers i.e something external to the model by virtue of its distinct qualitative properties. It would appear that independent wants are far more diaphonous in nature; so we must take a different course in trying to model these relationships, since by definition our graph cannot represent them in any meaningful way. Now, if we treat of independent wants in a game-theoretic fashion, we might arrive at an important epistemic conclusion. If A and B assume global wants and build a relationship based on local dependencies, and if we assume that happiness is the main object of these dependencies, then defecting from this entails that, in order to maintain the value of these dependencies, they must cooperate, so as to maximise the rewards from such a system. In other words, if happiness is a delusion, as some consider it, then defecting would be equivalent to rejecting the definition of happiness inherited from the community, while cooperating would be to accept its definition and yield all the benefits therefrom. If both defect, they may still be able to cooperate in terms of this commonality. This, I think, serves as a basis for subcommunities. The dependencies in question can be a number of things, hence why we may find a great many cliquish communities that oppose normative values; but these are local differences, not global, since they are still inherently social.
Considering this, if we treat independent wants as those things which we can only estimate, then the game takes on a very different flavour. Our players now must accomodate for wants which are unknown to them, yet both acknowledge must exist. It cannot be as simple as asking what these independent wants are, for the players themselves may not even be aware of this. It would be optimal to have perfect information of these wants; if, however, only one side has perfect information, the transaction will not be seen as equal, insofar as the degree to which these wants matter to A is equivalent to that of B. I think this is the primary failing of the utilitarian worldview. No matter how hard we try to extract value from relationships in order to further our own gain, if we don't make a committed effort to understand people we will always, inevitably, be short of obtaining any real value.
Hence, I can understand the point of wanting to refine our intuition and to never do away with it entirely. This is why I gave up on the social component of utilitarianism long ago; not out of protest, nor contempt, but simply because it seemed useless. There is, I think, a lot which I haven't covered, such as the role which our particular representations have in modeling utility, Nagel's semantic step wrt social conditioning, etc., all of which I might write up in the future. I suppose it's nice to try to clear my own thoughts every once in a while.
I can understand this point somewhat, as we might falsely operate within the constraints of wants which might be mischaracterisations of our behaviour. We are wont to assign value to those impulses which occlude our social intuition, and thus might be particularly harmful in actually integrating into a society which hold none of the same wants, or at least, wants which can never be confirmed empirically. In other words, to never other-think and out-step the natural boundaries imposed by our social circles.
I think in order to understand this, we must distinguish between dependent and independent wants. I perceive that dependent wants are those which require some shared understanding of transaction; specifically, attitudes which are assumed shared, always providing an estimate for local and, perhaps, arbitrarily met conditions for social normativity. And this provides us with a blueprint on how to form relationships. We are expected to receive as much as we are willing to give. It would be more accurate perhaps to classify them as being either global or local. Dependent wants which are global consist of attitudes inherited, and thus consanguineous, with a social apparatus, ab ovo, a particular normative model for which we are taught to assess in relation to how it may obtain in the future. We are taught to steer clear from bad crowds, insofar as society is taught to diminish their value.
Dependent wants which are local are characteristic of smaller communities, and are consequently reflective of attitudes inherited from the needs of the particular community, more often than not the microcosm, which players find themselves in. Local wants predicate a particular brand of moralism, whilst global wants are conflated with human nature. This is also why the model of the nuclear family works so well in Western society; it is, contrary to common sentiment, not indicative of the values of a particular microcosm, like rural communities with an almost theophanic relationship to God, but of the underlying structure of all communities; we don't consider communities as autonomous entities, but networks of people consigned to the rules of the game, a universal concept.
Now independent wants are, in some sense, local dependent wants, the difference being the removal of transaction in favour of according import to our desires. The desire to have ones social circle reflect his own interests, or to be integrated into the intelligentsia, the literati or aristocracy. They are wants which are not understood by virtue of their particular relationship to the wider social circle. Imagine a graph of a community, where each member represents a particular node, taking on weighted values, and are connected by functional connections. In some sense we can think of these members as represented by something qualitatively similar to an Erdos number. I perceive that these functional connections are predicated on local dependencies; in order to build up your network, you must try to meet certain standards of adequacy in maintaining relationships; relationships which are stronger require more effort, and those which we may call acquaintance-ships require a minimal amount of effort, though these will consequently obtain minimally. If we wanted to be really precise, we could try to assign value to things like time invested, stability (changes in functional connections), some measure of happiness in proximity to a particular person, etc., of which I won't do, since the aim of this graph is didactic by nature. The point is that all we have done are model connections based on certain constraints, of which are seen in observable occurrences. The means by which we extract the most utility from these relationships is one which is embedded into our graph; we can consider this a generative algorithm of sorts. Wants do not need to be explicated in order to be properly understood within these constraints.
So, if these functional connections are dependencies, we would find it very trifling to try to model independent wants. I consider these nomological danglers i.e something external to the model by virtue of its distinct qualitative properties. It would appear that independent wants are far more diaphonous in nature; so we must take a different course in trying to model these relationships, since by definition our graph cannot represent them in any meaningful way. Now, if we treat of independent wants in a game-theoretic fashion, we might arrive at an important epistemic conclusion. If A and B assume global wants and build a relationship based on local dependencies, and if we assume that happiness is the main object of these dependencies, then defecting from this entails that, in order to maintain the value of these dependencies, they must cooperate, so as to maximise the rewards from such a system. In other words, if happiness is a delusion, as some consider it, then defecting would be equivalent to rejecting the definition of happiness inherited from the community, while cooperating would be to accept its definition and yield all the benefits therefrom. If both defect, they may still be able to cooperate in terms of this commonality. This, I think, serves as a basis for subcommunities. The dependencies in question can be a number of things, hence why we may find a great many cliquish communities that oppose normative values; but these are local differences, not global, since they are still inherently social.
Considering this, if we treat independent wants as those things which we can only estimate, then the game takes on a very different flavour. Our players now must accomodate for wants which are unknown to them, yet both acknowledge must exist. It cannot be as simple as asking what these independent wants are, for the players themselves may not even be aware of this. It would be optimal to have perfect information of these wants; if, however, only one side has perfect information, the transaction will not be seen as equal, insofar as the degree to which these wants matter to A is equivalent to that of B. I think this is the primary failing of the utilitarian worldview. No matter how hard we try to extract value from relationships in order to further our own gain, if we don't make a committed effort to understand people we will always, inevitably, be short of obtaining any real value.
Hence, I can understand the point of wanting to refine our intuition and to never do away with it entirely. This is why I gave up on the social component of utilitarianism long ago; not out of protest, nor contempt, but simply because it seemed useless. There is, I think, a lot which I haven't covered, such as the role which our particular representations have in modeling utility, Nagel's semantic step wrt social conditioning, etc., all of which I might write up in the future. I suppose it's nice to try to clear my own thoughts every once in a while.
