Paradigm Shifts and Progress in Cultural Evolution

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Here’s a link to the slides from the research group talk yesterday.

It would be great to continue the discussion on this thread. Some of the questions I took away from the discussion:

  • How far can we take the analogy between scientific paradigm shifts and cultural paradigm shifts? (slide 4 is relevant to this)
  • What is the role of progress-towards-truth in thinking about progress between paradigms more generally?
  • Is Hegel’s dialectics useful in understanding the kind of progress at issue?
  • Does Wilber/integral theory have a more detailed way of understanding the nature of paradigmatic progress?
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I’ve always been inclined to some version of a pragmatic theory of truth, and I’m feeling an urge to extend this to what we could call a pragmatic (or utility) theory of paradigm — and therefore paradigm shifts and progress. This chimes in with Rufus’s comment “where McGilchrist goes in matter with things”.

What I’d like to explore here is the idea that paradigm shifts may be seen as related to what is paradigmatically true — useful for what, useful to whom?

Think about dictatorships, or maybe Orwell’s “1984”. The only things that are allowed to be (publicly) “true” are those that serve the party / the dictator ­— I guess that’s clear enough. Can I extend this to other “levels“?

We could see truth in modernism as whatever serves progress through technology. I see this today in Trumpism: worrying about climate change doesn’t serve technology, so it’s false. Extracting more fossil fuels serve technology well, so it must be right to do that. Big government regulates technology rather than supporting it, so let’s have DOGE to decimate government.

Maybe in the postmodern / “green” worldview, it is recognised that what is useful to different groups (particularly ones that are not served by modernism) varies from group to group, therefore there is a splintering of what is seen or counted as true: everyone has a right to their own truth.

Continuing, let me posit a metamodern pragmatic view of truth — and as I’m making this up as I go along I’m aware that I may be inadvertently either copying someone else or overlooking some better ideas. We are trying to bring together what is useful and what serves the world, what serves life. So we do well to look at different worldviews from the past and from other paradigms, and hold the dialogue around what works for everyone in the long term. This clearly includes critique.

Thus, we could see cultural evolution as progress in terms of deepening understanding of what is useful – what serves – at different scales. Inter-tribal conflict and warfare serves the short-term needs of particular tribes (the ones best at warfare). Neoliberal capitalism serves the short- and medium-term needs mainly of “developed” countries and their plutocracy. Etc. And this rests on an increasing understanding of the systemic dynamics at play in the world — an increasing grasp of complexity. It’s not that complexity is in some way good in itself, but that to understand what is actually useful, what actually serves the planet, we are inexorably drawn into the need to understand more and more deeply the complex web of relationships between the different living beings and living systems, and their parts.

Let’s see what resonance there is there.

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See also The Pragmatic Theory of Truth (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

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A question I have related to your presentation, @JonahW is around the last slide, the Metamodernism circles with authors. It’s not completely clear to me: could you perhaps do table version?

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I’ll be doing a little presentation this Friday and I’m happy to add a bit linking it to the question of truth. Within the paradigm I’ll be extrapolating from it seems impossible to find a mode of referring to the truth differently than what’s already present in modernity. (meaning I can’t see your metamodern angle) Namely that you can’t escape the truth being seen from the perspective of a worldview. There is however a complicating question of truth relevance and of actionability of truth. This is also answered very solidly within the framework by rendering truth “irrelevant” unless there’s a particular type of value assigned to the truth by the supporting underpinnings of the worldview that has that truth “reified” into a “common sense” truth or total domination.

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A bit puzzled by this, and would be happy to have a one-on-one conversation to clarify.

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Thanks Simon, yes this resonates a lot with me. I’ve also been interested in pragmatist theories of truth and your sketch of a metamodern theory of cultural evolution is very much in line with what I’m aiming for theoretically.

I think what’s important about philosophical pragmatism here is that it helps bridge the gap we discussed after the talk between progress-towards-truth and moral progress - since truth is defined as ‘what works’, morally or otherwise.

I think the difficulty here is in spelling this out in detail though. As the stanford encyclopedia article you referenced points out, there’s a lot of different kinds of pragmatic theories of truth, and on most of them there is still a distinction between what is true say in physics (‘what works’ best for manipulating fundamental particles, one might say) and what is true when it comes to serving humanity (system dynamics and complexity theory help here as you say).

Though as I write this I’m realising that putting it this way actually helps us see how progress in science connects up with cultural progress of the kind that we want. The connection comes via scientific paradigms like complexity theory and the ‘paradigm of emergence’, that can inform evaluative understanding of global systems and their evolution. Such paradigms are continuous both with normativity on one side, and with traditional natural sciences on the other side (as providing the base layers from which complexity emerges).

And this is linked to the suggestion I made in my talk that there could be structural similaries (which become more apparent from within complexity theory) between the evolution of scientific paradigms and the evolution of cultural paradigms (e.g. via the memetic model I mentioned), and the idea that a kind of structural realism helps understand these similarities.

I hope that makes sense - like you, I’m very much making this up as I go along, will need to think about this some more!

One final thought- the point I made towards the end of the talk about how both metamodernism and post-Kuhnian thinkers like Philip Kitcher recognising how something can be both true and socially constructed is I think also a key insight of pragmatism (and Kitcher is explicitly influenced by pragmatism). As the first paragraph of the SEP article says:

Unlike correspondence theories, which tend to see truth as a static relation between a truth-bearer and a truth-maker, pragmatic theories of truth tend to view truth as a function of the practices people engage in, and the commitments people make, when they solve problems, make assertions, or conduct scientific inquiry.

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Thanks Martin, I have a couple of initial thoughts about this.

Firstly since metamodernism ‘includes’ modernism, it should not be surprising that we find modernist aspects within metamodernism. Modernism is such a vast area that often metamodernist insights come from particular strands within modernism (which are nevertheless likely at odds with the mainstream of modernism). In fact I am personally leaning towards a framing of metamodernism in which I’d like to move away from the centrality of postmodernism in defining the concept, and think more about how metamodernism is an evolution of modernism.

Secondly when you say ‘you can’t escape truth being seen from the perspective of a worldview’ I think what we probably all agree on here is that truth is always truth for a community of inquirers - the question is though whether we can achieve a meta-community that can assign a place in a hierarchy to other communities and their truths. I see this as being part of the metamodernist project, e.g. in spiral dynamics.

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Thanks Jonah. How is a meta-community not a community? And how is a meta-community characterised by dominant ideology not a step closer to a greater intollerance of alternative truths? And what is the cost of “hosting” multiple truths to the executive function, if they are supposed to guide?

By the way - one might say that truth is truth for a community of inquirers, but you’re not saying anything about what is the nature of the truth acceptance by that community.

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Definitely worth exploring more. The tough part is that scientific paradigms themselves are a bit “dodgy” aka hard to make precise (but maybe that is true for cultural paradigms too once we dig). One of those things like pornography that is hard to define but “you know it when you see it” :wink:

BTW I’d say science is one of several example of “paradigm” (i.e. deeper) shifts that we could use as analogies. e.g. there are examples of class-es in evolution e.g. mammals. There are phase shifts but that is more generic. I think i maybe suggested more on the call.

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Meta-modernism really is (IMO) “just” integral politics so all of the core stuff is in integral.

And … IMO integral is pretty limited in its view of cultural evolution and cultural paradigms – it is largely just spiral dynamics. To be fair this mostly eflects the limited development of that field – especially when wilber was writing.

Much more on this latter point and how we can “footnote” and improve Integral here. I also think there is good stuff in Hanzi’s upcoming “Six Hidden Patterns”.

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Just read the slides and slide notes – super interesting and great outline, Jonah! Sorry I couldn’t be there for the presentation and discussion.

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Indeed. I’d go further and say that the inclusion of postmodern anti-realism – in any form – will sink the whole project. The problem is that there is no way of mixing realism and anti-realism which results in anything other than anti-realism. From the post-modernist POV that is an acceptable compromise – in fact it is quite handy to be able to switch between realism and antirealism when it suits you. From the realist’s perspective it is completely unacceptable – realism isn’t something you can just water down or optionally get rid of. It is an all or nothing sort of thing.

Which leads to the question of to what extent it is possible to defend scientific realism, and I believe the answer is that provided quantum mechanics is properly taken into account, scientific realism is eminently defensible. There is no reason to compromise beyond the compromises made necessary by the measurement problem and the role of probability in physics. EDIT (and the hard problem of consciousness also).

So yes, we need to go back to modernism and see how we can address the problems Hume and Kant were dealing with. We need to ask whether there is a better way to proceed than to divide reality into phenomena and noumena, and then treat everything that followed from that division as a resource to be plundered for anything useful rather than a progression of paradigms which need to be incorporated wholesale into the new one.

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Agreed. I have trouble taking SD seriously as a cultural evolution model. Among other things, it does not port well to non-Western settings. A more interesting starting point, IMO, was provided by Habermas’s relatively recent Also a History of Philosophy (vol 1). It’s interesting to speculate what Ken Wilber would have made of that work at the height of his powers.

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Could you explain how science fits into all this?

How do you avoid downgrading scientific knowledge to “just another perspective of a worldview”, as if the scientific way of looking at the world, and of generating knowledge, is no more privileged than the others?

I believe our best scientific knowledge should be reified. This isn’t “common sense” – that sounds far too much like a-scientific intuition. Within its legitimate domain (ie empirical knowledge about the structure of objective reality) science should totally dominate. Old earth geology and common descent in evolution should completely displace Young Earth Creationism (for example).

Why do I think this? Because we have good reason to believe there is a mind-external reality and good reason to believe science provides accurate knowledge of its structure – on other words, because it is objectively true. How else can we account for the success of science? (ie Putnam’s “no miracles” argument).

In this case truth is not merely a perspective of a worldview, because science is not just any old worldview. Rather, it is deservedly privileged. The modernist mistake here wasn’t scientific realism, but materialism, and science doesn’t actually need materialism. It is possible for our best scientific theories to be objectively true even if materialism is incoherent (because it implies consciousness should not exist).

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How would you know what’s “our best scientific knowledge” if it wasn’t through the common sense of a particular worldview that would inform you what authorities to follow?

What’s the difference between scientific knowledge and knowledge?

  1. Scientific knowledge is obtained through scientific method.
  2. Knowledge, among other methods, is acquired through reasoning and education.

How does Scientific knowledge get to us? Normally through education, most of us don’t get it directly from the source.

What’s education? It’s a mechanism of the society to re-produce worldviews by promoting dominant views as common sense.

Scientific method itself is a formalised process of “common sense” thinking and problem solving mixed with abstract reasoning and symbolic communication.

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Hello Martin.

I am having a lot of trouble following your post. From my perspective, it is a extreme example of over-complicating something in order to arrive at a relativistic conclusion.

The fact that scientific knowledge comes to us through education doesn’t make it any less scientific. It doesn’t become a mere social construction just because science can be thought of as a social activity itself. And “common sense” has nothing to do with it.

Let’s take a simple example: water is a compound composed of the elements hydrogen and oxygen. This is a structural fact about reality – it is scientific knowledge, and it is an example of fully objective scientific knowledge, by which I mean the probability that it will ever be falsified is nil. In other words, it is an objectively true statement about the structure of a mind-external reality.

Do you accept that? If not, why not?

The difference between scientific knowledge and other forms of knowledge is that scientific knowledge can be objective. It’s not knowledge merely about our subjective experience of the world, and it’s not merely opinion either. Also, it doesn’t involve any value judgements (which are subjective). The whole point in science is to eliminate such value judgements (or attempt to).

You seem to be arguing that scientific knowledge is not privileged. You think it relies on “common sense” and “education”, just like all other forms of knowledge? Is that correct?

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Hi Geoff,

I’d say that a structural fact about reality is that most individuals do not personally verify scientific facts like the composition of water and instead rely on the authority of scientific consensus, education, and trusted sources to accept such information as true.

Yes, there’s nothing special about “scientific knowledge”. What matters is how much truth a certain knowledge carries in a given context.

I wrote a summary of Pierre Bourdieu’s views on how much we’re conditioned by our upbringing and dominant worldviews. It also emphasises how the concept of what’s normal, logical, neutral is just a social construct.

From your assertions that you have a lot of trouble following my post - would it be fair to say that you consider my views irrational, non-logical, strange… ?

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@Martin I loved your Bourdieu summary and would be delighted to explore that in greater depth! (Limited myself to just one little topical response for now.)

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I’d say that a structural fact about reality is that most individuals do not personally verify scientific facts like the composition of water and instead rely on the authority of scientific consensus, education, and trusted sources to accept such information as true.

OK. That is true, but I am not sure why it matters.

Yes, there’s nothing special about “scientific knowledge”. What matters is how much truth a certain knowledge carries in a given context.

I wrote a summary of Pierre Bourdieu’s views on how much we’re conditioned by our upbringing and dominant worldviews. It also emphasises how the concept of what’s normal, logical, neutral is just a social construct.

And that is an attack on the epistemic authority of science. A sneaky attack, of exactly the sort we have come to expect from postmodernists.

From your assertions that you have a lot of trouble following my post - would it be fair to say that you consider my views irrational, non-logical, strange…

I consider them postmodern and anti-scientific. They look to me like a deliberate attempt to erode the legitimacy of scientific knowledge by casting doubt in whatever way possible.

I start from somewhere very simple.

  1. Consciousness exists. I am experiencing being embodied in a world.
  2. I note that other beings exist in this world, who also appear to be conscious.
  3. I note that science works. Something about scientific methods produces knowledge which is much more reliable than any other sort of knowledge – there is no other way of explaining why it has transformed the world.
  4. The only explanation I can think of for why science works is that it provides reliable knowledge about the structure of an objective (ie mind-external) reality – that’s why certain things remain persistently true in my (subjective) reality, your reality, and everybody-else’s reality.

None of the above steps makes any reference to “dominant worldviews” or the nature of education, or “common sense” or social constructs or trusted sources, and from my perspective none of that makes the slightest bit of difference. Therefore your arguments look to me like a deliberate and cynical attempt to undermine the authority of scientific knowledge. This is one of the main reasons why postmodernism failed, and why the same sort of attitude must not be carried over into the new paradigm. I think we need to accept that scientific knowledge really is different to other sorts of knowledge. In fact I think that needs to be part of the foundation of the new paradigm. It must be set in stone, so nobody can come along and attempt to undermine it for political-ideological motives.