The original copy I found seems to have disappeared, along with his page at the University of Chicago. So I’m going to host it here.
liberalismsdivide
I just finished reading Democracy in America (and started the Nurture Assumption), and for much of it I had been disappointed that de Tocqueville wasn’t living up to his Levy’s portrayal. He seemed too favorable toward centralism and too much of an evangelist of the effects of equality and democracy (compare Bertrand de Jouvenel). He redeems himself in Volume 2 part IV. He even imagines something that he cannot give a name to but we might refer to as a “nanny-state”. I’m not going to use the term “pink police state” because James Poulos has yet to give a clear definition of what that is. Much of Levy’s paper is focused on the French ancien regime, so perhaps I should have read Tocqueville’s other work on that subject.
I find it odd that Levy includes Kant in his pantheon to represent the rationalist side of liberalism, and then scarcely refers to him afterward. Benjamin Constant, who isn’t included on either side (but seems to have been more of a pluralist) gets more space devoted to him. As a partisan of the pluralist position, I would say it is because he is less integral to liberalism and the pluralist side is bound to have better representation. He does refer to Nozick as a Kantian, but his “utopia” is more like Chandran Kukatha’s Federation than Union of Liberty.
In the section on James Scott’s Seeing Like a State he discusses how markets may also be creatures of centralizing rationalism. Kevin Carson, with his discussion of the enclosure movement, also makes that argument. Although the topic is not part of his focus, Jeff Hummel’s talk on the gold standard mentioned in the previous post also points out how taxes in gold (or gold-backed currency) were used by imperialists to force natives to switch from their traditional lifestyle to plantation work. I’m a fan of markets and the basic idea behind Mencius Moldbug’s formalism (ambiguity in property is undesirable), but do I want to push traditionalist communitarians into a market order? I come down on the nay side. I don’t think that means I’m not a market liberal. I think markets will naturally emerge because they produce results people desire. I want freedom for Israelis to form kibbutzim, but I also expect them to die out in favor of more market-like arrangements. That seems a more healthy process than ones like the privatization Russia went through that Kevin Carson argues drives people toward anti-market populism.
One thing that struck as odd was that Levy refers to children, the insane and the brainwashed as obviously not having autonomy. There are no references to the Szaszian position on mental illness or the Popperian Taking Children Seriously movement. The latter in particular would seem to be boosted by Judith Harris’ work on child development. As for brainwashing, I think it’s only relevant in movies. I argued with Will Wilkinson about false consciousness with the point that if you rule out any decisions people make there will be nothing to make any decisions “authentic”.
On a final note, I actually started Burke’s “Reflections” before de Tocqueville, but got distracted. After I finish that though, who do you readers think deserves priority among Montesquieue, Paine and Mill?
Entitled to an Opinion 
August 3, 2008 at 12:21 am
Depends, Mill is interesting, but not as challenging to a libertarian’s thought as Montesqieue. As a revolutionary, Montesqueiue could also give some better insights into Burke and de Tocqueville’s writings. After that’s what both of them, as conservatives, opposed.
Dunno anything about Paine..
August 3, 2008 at 1:51 pm
Almost anybody who has dealt with children, or with the insane, will dismiss the silly theories of Szasz or Taking Children Seriously. At least in their extreme forms, which is how they are usually presented.
I once proposed starting an organization of formerly-anarchist parents. Parenthood is a really good way to get an appreciation for the role of power and authority in human affairs.
August 3, 2008 at 2:29 pm
Szasz did deal with the insane. I think plenty of people in the TCS movement have children as well.
By the way, have you read the Nurture Assumption? I just gobbled up a big portion of it yesterday and I’ve found it the best written pop-sci I know of. Judith Harris is just plain funny.
August 3, 2008 at 11:59 pm
I said “almost” for a reason. Put another way, the proportion of people who have direct knowledge of children or the insane and accept the TCS or Szasz models is very small.
Szasz in particular seems to be caught up in a form of Cartesian dualism that is contradicted by the simple biological facts of mental illness. The TCS stuff I’m less familiar with, but it too seems to think that you can decouple reason from the processes that produce it.
Haven’t read the Nuture Assumption, but it sounds good. For some reason it and the other discussion reminded me of Mother Nature by Sarah Hrdy, another pop-sci book which shows that parent-child conflict starts well before birth.
August 4, 2008 at 12:27 am
Almost no people without direct knowledge of children or the insane know of TCS or Szasz. Both ideas are on the fringe. If adherents of either tend to leave the fold upon gaining experience you’d have a point.
What are the “biological facts of mental illness”? Are they akin to the biological facts of physical illness?
August 4, 2008 at 11:22 am
The fact that those ideas are fringy was my point; you shouldn’t be surprised if people fail to cite ideas that are not in wide circulation. Szasz is certainly well-known; he has had ample opportunity for his ideas to become less fringy. There were pretty strong antipsychiatry movements coming out of the sixties, led by Szasz from the right (more or less) and R.D. Laing from the left. These critiques had some good points to make but at least in Szasz’s case those are lost given his counterfactual ideology.
The biological facts of mental illness include genetic components to schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and many others, and the fact that they and other disorders respond to drug treatments, and the simple fact that the mind is implemented by the brain, which is a biophysical mechanism and like any other one is prone to malfunctions.
Note that this doesn’t mean that psychiatric diagnosis can’t be abused, or that behavior that is simply divergent from the norm can be labelled as diseased unjustifiably, or that pyschiatric diagnosis is not used a mechanism of social control.
August 4, 2008 at 1:07 pm
Szasz and TCS are on the fringe for the general public, but to a much lesser degree for Levy and are relevant for the topic he’s discussing. Popper was a member of the Mont Pelerin society Levy discusses, though despite Hayek’s influence he was a welfare state liberal rather than a classical one.
Natural selection tends to purge things that cause fitness reducers like schizophrenia. That’s why Cochran has suggested a pathogenic explanation as with homosexuality. The latter of course was famously removed from the list of mental illnesses not for any scientific reasons but political ones, and has biological roots. I think you will agree with me that it was not included in the first place for scientific reasons. It is of course the case that the mind is implemented by the brain and that our brain shaped to a very significant degree by our genes. That doesn’t make a tendency to sneeze in elevators into a mental illness, or a fondness for the color red. So what is the criteria for labelling something a mental illness? Physical illnesses have Koch’s postulates, but I don’t think mental illnesses have anything similar.
August 4, 2008 at 2:45 pm
Maybe. Szsaz is a particularly irritating figure for me, because he’s partly right and also totally wrong, in a way that is typical of libertaraians.
There are oodles of non-mental genetic disorders that have not been purged by evolution, for various reasons (often the genes involved confer some advantage under certain conditions).
It is true that it is hard to determine exactly what is a mental illness and where you draw the line between mere peculiar behavior. But that doesn’t mean mental illness doesn’t exist. In other words, it’s a hard problem and I don’t see Szasz’s stance as contributing towards a solution.
I hadn’t heard of Koch’s postulates, but they only apply to diseases caused by infectious agents and so don’t cover the space of non-mental disorders.
August 4, 2008 at 3:22 pm
Mental institutions are, if not de jure, de facto extensions of the state prison system. Wouldn’t you demand more than “Yeah, it’s a hard line but it has to be drawn, and these are the people we’ve authorized to draw it”? The Rosenhan experiment shows how reliable their line drawing is. If there are people whose behavior we dislike because it’s harmful to others, then go ahead an lock them up, but don’t pretend what you’re doing is medicine. With a real physical illness people voluntarily request treatment and stay at hospitals. The idea that people’s consent is irrelevant because “It’s not them, it’s the disease” is what strikes me as Cartesian. I don’t see anything in medicine that prevents all of us from being considered mentally ill and therefore invalidating all our choices.
August 4, 2008 at 5:59 pm
Indeed mental “illnesses” have physical foundations, i.e. the brain, but then so do “normal” people have behavior rooted in the brain. So the claim that it really is physical cuts both ways.
August 4, 2008 at 6:46 pm
Criminality and mental illness are both socially constructed, but that doesn’t make them any less real phenomena.
You should read some Bruno Latour, who would hold that all scientific facts are social constructs. There is a sense in which he is right which is illuminating to think about.
I don’t see anything in medicine that prevents all of us from being considered mentally ill and therefore invalidating all our choices.
Well, yes. Welcome to the real world, which has no guarantees. You live in society, society can fuck you over. What stops medicine from declaring us all mentally ill is that they couldn’t get away with it, even if they wanted to, since they are but one power among many in society.
There are numerous battles on the margins of psychiatry — are we overdiagnosing depression and ADHD, for instance — which are pretty interesting to watch. I have no problem with curbing the powers of psychiatry especially in their coercive form. But you can’t do it my defining the phenomenon they deal with out of existence.
August 4, 2008 at 11:12 pm
If I should not deny them some unjustifiable power, why should I grant them any power at all? By what criteria may we even say that they are “overdiagnosing”? Are the concepts of Type 1 and 2 error even meaningful for such a diagnosis, as they are in the paradigmatic Bayesian problems?
I actually like your analogy of criminality. It is the arbitrary rule of the lawgiver. It is not a science of any sort. We recognize the power of the criminal justice and in our desire that it not be arbitrary we try to ensure there is rule of law and make lawgivers accountable to the people so that bad law may be changed. When a person is convicted of a crime their sentence is the maximum penalty which may be reduced in response to good behavior. We do not wait until they are “cured” of criminality! The restrictions we place on criminals are the penalty for crimes they have committed (not that they might be prone to committing) and serve to protect society. We do not pretend it is for their own good. So why not subsume our psychiatric institutions within the criminal justice system and abolish the insanity defense?
August 6, 2008 at 10:25 am
Who put you in charge of “granting power”? I hereby grant myself the power to fly and to dine at any restaurant without paying.
Anyway, the question under debate has shifted from whether mental illness exists to how it should be dealt with; not the same thing at all, although obviously related. Eliminating the mental health system and transferring all of its functions to the legal/penal system won’t change the reality, and I think you’d find that people with serious mental illness would be just as disruptive to prison life as they are to outside society.
You seem to suffer from a typical libertarianish thought-bug, which is to suppose that if a concept isn’t crisply defined, it is meaningless. The real world isn’t like that.
August 6, 2008 at 10:51 am
Who put you in charge of “granting power”?
I’ve been told we live in a democracy where laws depend on the consent of the people. Literally speaking though, you’re right that I don’t have the power to change anything. I complain about stuff anyway, as do you at your blog.
the question under debate has shifted from whether mental illness exists to how it should be dealt with
I don’t think karma or chakras exist, but if some people do, that’s their business. If Karma Police wasn’t just a Radiohead song, I’d spend more time attacking the concept.
I think you’d find that people with serious mental illness would be just as disruptive to prison life as they are to outside society
We’ve already got people who murder other prisoners and/or guards. We put people in solitary confinement to limit how disruptive they can be.
You seem to suffer from a typical libertarianish thought-bug, which is to suppose that if a concept isn’t crisply defined, it is meaningless.
I think the State will take poorly defined concepts and use them to expand its power over us. When I see nothing in the definition that would prevent it from being used against me, I cry foul.
August 6, 2008 at 6:47 pm
Well, I’m making fun of your language, but there is a real difference in perspective. Libertarianoids think that power can be constrained by some law that they make up from first principles, lefties like me think that law is a product, as well as a definer, of power relationships.
Szasz and you have a valid point that psychiatric diganoses are used as a tool of social control, and I’d join you in opposing this. But he undermines his argument by denying that there can be real psychiatric disorders. By taking an all-or-nothing stance, you wind up with nothing.
Here’s a recent post by Cochran on the genetics of schizophrenia, for instance. There’s no question that schizophrenia is a real disease with a physiological basis. That’s not necessarily true of all psychiatric diagnoses. But from reading the comments at GNXP I found this study that shows a linkage between a genetic signature and ADHD, which surprised me. This may not prove that ADHD is a disease, but indicates that it is something real, since it correlates with something objectively measurable.
August 6, 2008 at 8:27 pm
Of course there is! We can’t even confirm that what we call ‘schizophrenia’ has one, some, or many etiologies. The condition is defined entirely in terms of symptoms. And, just as with all the other mental disorders, people like to jump on the latest research findings that they can use to prop up their existing opinions – which are then quietly ignored when further research shows those claims to be unjustified.
Do you have any idea how many failed attempts there have been to explain schizophrenia based on what people thought were clear differences between schizophrenics and ‘normal’ people?
August 6, 2008 at 8:36 pm
Libertarianoids
As distinct from libertarians sans oid?
lefties like me think that law is a product, as well as a definer, of power relationships
In my writing on stuff like de Jouvenel, decentralism, rule of law, originalism, judicial deference and other things I’ve put forth a similar view. I do not believe in natural law, only positive law, and I wish to constrain anyone from having the massive amount of coercive power that we see in modern states about as much as possible. I think the Federalists were wrong to believe that the mere text of the Constitution could constrain the government, it only serves a little value as a Schelling point. I think if the State is likely to be captured by nefarious powerful interests (though like Caplan I believe that lets We the People off the hook), all the more reason to remove powers from the state. At the point in time in which the Catholic Church is raising armies and nuking cities I’ll agree that a “countervailing power” is desirable, but I don’t think we’re anywhere near that point.
But he undermines his argument by denying that there can be real psychiatric disorders.
I don’t think he rejects things like Alzheimers or epilepsy. My take on his position is that all human beings have preferences and dispositions, and the tail-ends of these have been normatively judged in the guise of medicine.
By taking an all-or-nothing stance, you wind up with nothing
In what sense have we wound up with nothing? That Szasz’ policy preferences haven’t been enacted? Or that there are no mental illnesses? If the latter, ask yourself why it is not the case that all preferences are mental illnesses. If there is no basis for making the distinction between valid and invalid preferences, why are there any invalid preferences?
There’s no question that schizophrenia is a real disease with a physiological basis.
It’s a catch-all. EVERYTHING has a physiological basis. I could easily claim “Non-schizophrenia is a real disease with a physiological basis”, and on what basis would you refute me? Michael Savage wrote a book called “Liberalism is a mental disorder”, and political ideology does have a genetic component likely implemented by the brain. We consider such statements ridiculous because of our normative judgment of the concepts. Schizophrenia, by the way, was the mental illness tested in the Rosenhan experiment.
from reading the comments at GNXP I found this study that shows a linkage between a genetic signature and ADHD, which surprised me
Why should it? Personality traits like extroversion and conscientiousness are to a significant degree heritable.
August 7, 2008 at 11:02 am
As distinct from libertarians sans oid?
I’m looking for a word that describes people whose thought is libertarian-flavored but may not adhere rigidly to that ideology, which I guess would include you. Got a better term?
…all the more reason to remove powers from the state.
My take on his position is that all human beings have preferences and dispositions, and the tail-ends of these have been normatively judged in the guise of medicine.
Uh huh. And how much personal experience do you base this view on?
I am no expert, but having had to deal with several mentally disturbed people in group living situations at various points, I can guarantee you that their problems were not merely having divergent “personal preferences”.
In what sense have we wound up with nothing? That Szasz’ policy preferences haven’t been enacted?
What I meant was that Szasz’s valid critiques are too easily dismissed because he bases it on an overly-extreme theory, making it too easy to dismiss him in toto.
It’s [schizophrenia] a catch-all.
So is “cancer”, but that doesn’t make the underlying diseaseS any less real.
EVERYTHING has a physiological basis.
Right. So if things can go wrong with the liver or pancreas, why is it so hard to believe that things can go wrong with the brain?
August 7, 2008 at 2:10 pm
I’m looking for a word that describes people whose thought is libertarian-flavored but may not adhere rigidly to that ideology, which I guess would include you. Got a better term?
I think simply “libertarian” would suffice. I don’t think Szasz was typical, but he’s still considered a libertarian.
Uh huh. And how much personal experience do you base this view on?
In the quote you are responding to I was explaining what I believe Szasz’ view was. I gather he based his view on his experience working with mental patients. I personally haven’t such experiences.
I can guarantee you that their problems were not merely having divergent “personal preferences”.
What were they then? And are you referring to people with addictions?
What I meant was that Szasz’s valid critiques are too easily dismissed because he bases it on an overly-extreme theory, making it too easy to dismiss him in toto.
I’ve heard the same criticism for New Atheist types.
So is “cancer”, but that doesn’t make the underlying diseaseS any less real.
There’s even brain cancer. It’s just cells multiplying uncontrollably because one developed a mutation. If left untreated it results in death, if a pathologist finds it early it can be removed. Schizophrenia is a bunch of different behavior we find weird but without any suspected common cause (the GNXP link points out their failure to find any), it does not result in death if untreated, there is no reliable method of diagnosis (Rosenhan experiment) and John Nash basically cured himself just by deciding he’d rather not be crazy. Except for that last part it sounds a bit like homosexuality, which used to be considered a mental illness. I’m still waiting for your explanation of the scientific basis for that change.
Right. So if things can go wrong with the liver or pancreas, why is it so hard to believe that things can go wrong with the brain?
Things can go wrong: brain cancer, alzheimers, prions, stroke. Mental illnesses are supposed to be diseases of the mind, but the mind doesn’t exist separately from the brain.
By the way, did you read Caplan’s account of Szasz’ theory? That’s what persuaded me, as I haven’t read Szasz first-hand.
August 7, 2008 at 6:09 pm
We can define what causes a cell to qualify as cancerous, and we can specify what would be necessary for a person to be said to have cancer even if we hadn’t detected it yet. We know there are different varieties of cancer, and we know what makes them different on a very fundamental level.
We can’t do that with schizophrenia. We can’t even show that the concept is coherent.
No one is denying that the brain can malfunction. What we’re denying is that schizophrenia is an example of a known neurophysiological malfunction.
August 7, 2008 at 10:46 pm
No, addicts on the whole are rational, and match your model (their preferences are just skewed). People with severe personality disorders, on the other hand, are just impossible to deal with — they can’t handle the ordinary social interaction that makes life function. Sometimes this takes the form of lying, violation of personal boundaries, erratic behavior, threatening suicide, acting out, and just general inability to interact in normal fashion.
This is, in fact, the operational definition of crazy, the kind of thing that gets you committed by your friends or family. The coercive part of the mental health system exists because society needs some way to handle people who are impossible to deal with normally. Forget whether this is a power you want to “grant” to anyone or not; I’m being descriptive here.
By way of contrast, for instance, this guy is a San Francisco landmark and probably has mental health problems. But he’s found a mode of life that doesn’t piss people off, so nobody’s going to haul him away, although he might not be so lucky in a less tolerant city.
I’ve heard the same criticism for New Atheist types.
Sort of, the analogy is rather strained. I’m not accusing Szasz of being an asshole, I’m accusing him of being wrong.
The point about “cancer” is that it is a term that lumps together a large number of disparate diseases. We used to not be able to tell the difference in mechanism between them, but now we can, and they are being further subdivided as research progresses. Schizophrenia is probably the same; but our understanding of the brain is really quite primitive at this point but someday we will break it down into separate disorders, each with their own etiology.
I’m still waiting for your explanation of the scientific basis for that change.
I’m not defending every single psychiatric diagnosis that ever existed, and I think I’ve said as much. But I’m surprised you would use homosexuality as an example after citing Cochran’s theory that it is caused by a pathogen. If the fact that its categorization is subject to politics upsets you, sorry, but that’s how life is, science included.
I haven’t read Caplan, but I read Szasz some decades ago.
August 8, 2008 at 3:04 am
threatening suicide
See the economics of suicide. It is a more drastic form of acting out.
inability to interact in normal fashion.
Would they be unable to even if you held a gun to their head?
this guy
You wanted to provide a contrast to really crazy people, and you say this guy is still crazy. So what makes for crazy? If he had delusions of mediocrity and everyone ignored him, would that make him crazy?
We used to not be able to tell the difference in mechanism between them
The mechanism is the one thing that’s common, the self-destruct mechanism of a cell gets turned off. The difference between them is which cells it occurs in.
Schizophrenia is probably the same; but our understanding of the brain is really quite primitive at this point but someday we will break it down into separate disorders
Right now all we have are different symptoms whose cause is unknown but have been lumped together since the bad old days of Freud and other quacks. Examining the brains of schizophrenics does not reveal any common brain abnormatilities, which is why Bentall proposes abolishing the grouping and treating each symptom individually. What is the scientific basis for grouping those symptoms together? There isn’t any common diagnostic criteria they fall under, because there isn’t any scientific diagnostic: hence the Rosenhan results.
But I’m surprised you would use homosexuality as an example after citing Cochran’s theory that it is caused by a pathogen
Dean Hamer used to trumpet a supposed “gay gene”, and pro-gay folks latched onto that explanation against religious troglodytes that thought it was a choice popularized by toaster-winning recruiters and could be reversed with a healthy dose of Jesus. If there was a schizophrenia gene (and we can now be confident there isn’t) you’d be telling me that proved schizophrenia was a real disease. If Greg Cochran’s theory becomes mainstream, do you think they’ll add it back into the DSM? Of course not, because the cause has never had anything to do with inclusion. The reason it was added was because people disapproved of homosexual behavior, and it was removed because of acceptance. My argument is that EVERYONE could potentially be diagnosed with a mental disorder should their behavior become similarly disapproved of and there would not be a scientific reed to support their denials precisely because science has nothing to do with it.
August 8, 2008 at 10:50 am
In psychiatric practice, behaviors or beliefs cannot be considered to be evidence of disorder if they are commonly shared within the society of the patient.
So a person who believes demons are ruining his life and sets fire to his head is psychotic, unless he belongs to a culture in which those are accepted beliefs, in which case his behaviors are no longer symptoms.
If a person belongs to a religion in which it is accepted that God can speak to people, claiming to hear the voice of God is not evidence of disorder – unless the claimed voices offer instructions that religious authorities feel are incompatible with their’s religion’s teachings, in which case the voices are then symptoms again.
There’s nothing there but social construction.
August 8, 2008 at 12:37 pm
Well, one could go further and say the concept of disease in general is a social construction.
However, one can talk about how to improve the optimization of various elements of their body, including one’s moods and mental states, in order to accomplish goals (such as maximizing one’s persistence odds). To me that’s where there are some insights from fields including psychiatry that can be useful.
August 8, 2008 at 1:22 pm
As mentioned, one of the major differences between medical diseases and mental illnesses is that the latter do not result in death. Syphilis does, and examinations of syphilitic brains reveals obvious damage. The same is not true of schizophrenia.
August 9, 2008 at 11:29 am
Would they be unable to even if you held a gun to their head?
Who knows? But I thought you did not favor coercion to deal with the mentally unstable.
You wanted to provide a contrast to really crazy people, and you say this guy is still crazy. So what makes for crazy?
No, I’m contrasting “crazy and impossible to deal with” with just plain crazy. The former category is the kind of person who gets locked up. You can, in general, be as crazy as you like if you manage to do it in a way that doesn’t piss people off too much. At least in San Francisco.
The mechanism is the one thing that’s common, the self-destruct mechanism of a cell gets turned off.
That is essentially a symptom, which can be caused by dozens of different genetic malfunctions that affect different mechanisms.
Somebody who pays as much attention to largely groundless economic theory ought not to be so quick to dismiss Freud.
If there was a schizophrenia gene (and we can now be confident there isn’t)
What are you talking about? There is not “a” schizophrenia gene, but there are many genes that are linked to schizophrenia.
As mentioned, one of the major differences between medical diseases and mental illnesses is that the latter do not result in death.
Huh? There are many “medical diseases” that do not result in death.
melendwyr: There’s nothing there but social construction.
Everything’s a social construction, buddy. Live with it.
August 9, 2008 at 12:16 pm
mtravern’s right, in my estimation.
August 9, 2008 at 8:21 pm
What are you talking about?
You linked earlier to a discussion at GNXP about the failure to find the schizophrenia gene. What we have found, even according to your link, seems pretty weak.
That is essentially a symptom, which can be caused by dozens of different genetic malfunctions that affect different mechanisms.
All the cells in our body share the same DNA, I thought they all had one self-destruct mechanism. I could be wrong though.
Somebody who pays as much attention to largely groundless economic theory ought not to be so quick to dismiss Freud.
I think division of labor and comparative advantage have held up a lot better than penis-envy or the Oedipus complex, despite being considerably older.
August 9, 2008 at 8:56 pm
I think Oedipus complex may get a bad rap. I’m curious about specific empirical investigation into the degree to which heterosexuals want to fuck their opposite gendered parent and replace their same gendered parent. It seems to me to fit well into standard primate aesthetics.
Although I don’t know if male primates who go on to be the breeding alpha males of their social group have sex with their mothers if the mother is still fertile in other primate species.
August 9, 2008 at 9:05 pm
The incest taboo among people who grow up together seems to be pretty strongly ingrained at an instinctive level. See the example of Israeli kibbutzim versus separated-at-birth relatives that meet up later.
August 9, 2008 at 9:16 pm
TGGP, at best it seems to me that there seems to be conflicting instinct. For example, look at robust incest erotica, which wouldn’t exist with a more perfect instinct (we can contrast it with the much less robust erotica to have sex with the prepubescent).
I did a little internet research, and there seems to me to be at least some evidence that some primates are as statistically likely to be the result of an incestuous procreation as they would be if procreation was occuring with random regard for kinship in their social groups (the research I found was done, I think, on barbary macaques).
With the nuclear family standing in for our primate social group, I could see how daughters psychologically could be vying with their mothers for procreative opportunities with the dominant male (their father), and how sons could both be vying for procreative opportunities with their mother and sisters, and to drive out and replace their father as the dominant male.
Speculative, but I haven’t seen this idea destroyed, and I think it’s what at the heart of Freud’s idea of Oedipal/Elektra complexes.
August 10, 2008 at 9:08 am
Did someone break your mind 1984-style when I wasn’t looking? Do you believe agents of the Party can fly around the room if they so will?
The vast majority of relationships we come into contact with on a daily basis are NOT socially constructed. And the ones that are exist only because of perturbations in the ones that aren’t.
If mental disorders were the result of simple physiological malfunctions, we would have recognized the etiology by now. They aren’t.
You cannot reasonably justify your positions regarding what sorts of behaviors are acceptable and unacceptable by declaring some diseases. Live with it.
August 10, 2008 at 11:38 am
Saying something is socially constructed does not meant that it is wholly arbitrary. This is a common confusion.
The quote about “agents of the Party” is funny and telling. You assume that society is some oppressive outside force. It isn’t. You’re soaking in it. You make it and it makes you.
And, to back off a little bit — not everything is a social construct. Reality is what it is (an instatiation of the Schrödinger equation, let’s say). Some concepts are biologically innate (color, objects, up vs down). But everything interesting that we talk about is a sociocultural construct. Not arbitrary, because it all rests on the other layers, but highly malleable and subject to all sorts of primate politics.
August 10, 2008 at 1:21 pm
Re cancer: The normal reproduction of cells involves many different mechanisms and pathways, which can break in many different ways. This is usually caused by local mutations, which means that the cancer cells do not share the same DNA as the rest of the body.
Re Freud: defending Freud is a bigger job than I have time for right now…but let me say that his status as a major thinker doesn’t rest on the details of penis-envy or the like, much of which he got wrong, but in that he firmly established that minds are not unitary but made up of all sorts of hidden modules which are often in conflict. In other words, the opposite of what a rationalist economist like Caplan likes to believe.
And, FWIW, the Oedipus complex appears on the list of human universals popularized by Pinker in The Blank Slate.
August 10, 2008 at 2:00 pm
Funny enough, it was Stephen Pinker in how the mind works who gave the most thorough debunking (to me) of the Oedipus/Elektra complexes. I quoted some of his discussion in incest taboos here. I think he did say that fathers have a greater motive to commit incest with their daughters than the reverse, but that it is usually step-fathers (completely unrelated) that actually do so. By the time sons are old enough to have hit puberty, their mothers will be well out of the desirable age-range.
When I said all cells have the same DNA, I meant before any has a mutation that makes them cancerous.
August 10, 2008 at 9:26 pm
this is more of an aside and a peeve, “usually” does not eliminate a concept. “Never” eliminates a concept. Usually should mean hmmm, so we have a distribution that’s at least binary, let’s take a closer look at the varience and what it can tell us. Unfortunately too often, good thinkers move quickly from “usually” to “therefore”.
August 11, 2008 at 12:17 am
I suppose that “usually” comes from my reference to step-fathers. To be honest, I don’t know whether fathers diddling their daughters is more common than the molesting of pre-pubescents.
August 11, 2008 at 2:27 am
TGGP, I think there’s abundant evidence that incest is one of the most popular erotic fantasies. I think that makes sense if the nuclear family fills the role of the primate social group for many people. I don’t think it makes much sense if there’s a strong evolutionary psychological mechanism that causes us to find sex repulsive with either people are close to genetically or grew up around. Thus, I think it’s more likely to be an more recent, culturally developed social mechanism than a sociobiological one.
August 11, 2008 at 4:01 pm
Once again I’m going to appeal to the example of Israeli kibbutzim, where children were actually encouraged to marry each other once they became adults but refused to do so.
August 11, 2008 at 4:38 pm
As I think more about it I think there may be instincts in conflict (it doesn’t have to be one or the other).
But what’s actually become more interesting to me is concentration/focus drift. This doesn’t seem to be that vital to maximizing my persistence odds, I have limited time and energy, and yet I got sucked into what seems likely to me to be resource waste discussing this side topic with you.
August 13, 2008 at 3:08 pm
mtraven, you don’t have the slightest idea what you’re talking about.
See Social Construction for an example.
August 13, 2008 at 3:11 pm
[…] so hasty to make a point in your favor that you actually demolish your argument is no virtue. Taking the time to check, even when […]
August 14, 2008 at 1:07 am
An example of what? Am I supposed to cower before the awesome authority of some mediocre-quality wikipedia page? One that does not even contradict my position, as far as I can tell. If you have an argument to make, make it, the empty invective is not very interesting or amusing.
August 14, 2008 at 8:19 am
That sums up the problem here rather elegantly.
For the record, mtraven, every source I consulted (a few of which I linked to) contradicts your claim. Clearly, explicitly, and usually in the same paragraph in which the concept of ‘social construction’ was first mentioned.
August 14, 2008 at 10:07 am
Let’s see. You said that social constructioh implies that people can fly at will. I pointed out that that is not, in general, what social constuctionists believe. To repeat, Saying something is socially constructed does not meant that it is wholly arbitrary. You haven’t produced anything that supports your position over mine.
At any rate, there are a variety of intepretations for the term “social construction” and I am only responsible for my own use of the term, so even if you can produce some social constructionists who believe they can fly, which you haven’t done, that would not be very interesting.
There should be no doubt that some things are socially constructed. Institutions like the US Government or Microsoft are built out of people’s social practices, and obviousy could be constructed differently than they are — but not aribitrarily (it would be hard, for instance, to have a government with sovereingity over left-handed people rather than over a particular geographic area).
To take a more challenging example, take Newton’s laws of motion. Are these social construts? Well, sort of — that’s why we attribute them to Newton, and he himself admitted to standing on the shoulders of giants. Also, the fact that we call them “laws” — an implied and imperfect metaphor based on human law is significant, as is the fact that they are an imperfect approximation to the actual regularities of the physical world. But, that doesn’t mean that Newton pulled them out of his ass, or that he could have just as easily come up with an inverse-linear or inverse-cube law of gravity.
August 14, 2008 at 11:00 am
Except the sources that say precisely the opposite.
You don’t understand what I’m saying, you don’t understand what the sources are saying – I think we’re done here.
August 14, 2008 at 11:41 am
Whatever, dude. You seem to drag down the level of discourse of any forum you are part of.
August 15, 2008 at 9:25 am
[…] on the number of idiots I’ve seen using this strategy, it seems to be highly effective, especially since the only real defense I’m aware of is to […]
August 16, 2008 at 1:15 pm
I know HA has dropped out of the discussion, but I just read http://scienceblogs.com/gnxp/2008/08/taking_the_pill_might_make_you.php#more and it reminds me that I forgot about another fact Pinker brings up: when pre-arranged marriage kids are brought to live with their betrotheds, it doesn’t work out. However, Razib also claims that brother-sister marriages went on for some time in Egypt.
May 10, 2009 at 1:29 am
[…] restraint here. Like Orin Kerr at Volokh, I’m more sympathetic to Burkeanism (or hostile to rationalism) and this leads me to be more receptive to restraint generally (so this could apply as well to a […]
March 28, 2012 at 1:32 am
[…] to evaluate his arguments. I’d consider myself opposed to rationalism when contrasted with pluralism/empiricism but contrasted with actual irrationalism/superstition I come off as just another kind of […]
February 11, 2014 at 1:02 am
[…] Razib Khan are as well. I am of the right in part because I’m so far toward the latter end of Jacob Levy’s rationalism vs pluralism axis that he would not consider me included in the big liberal* tent (although I certainly have […]