Regarding the evolution of cultural justification systems, Kohlberg's
(1977) comments may be of interest to this group:

   - "Historical and cross-cultural evidence supports the notion of a
   long-range moral evolutionary trend on the societal level"

The attached table documents Kohlberg's approach to assessing "cultural
stages of legal systems" (that align loosely with the stages detailed in
his account of the "ontogenesis of justice reasoning").

But, as Kohlberg (1977) also observes, "Watergate reminds us that the Stage
5 social contract still waits for the majority to evolve."

The source is a chapter entitled "The Future of Liberalism as the Dominant
Ideology of the Western World" (included in Kohlberg's anthology, *The
Philosophy of Moral Development*).

~ Steve Q.




On Thu, May 9, 2019 at 12:59 PM Henriques, Gregg - henriqgx <
[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> Fascinating thoughts, Jamie. Thanks for sharing them. I agree that
> evolutionary epistemology is a good way to study the evolution of culture
> and ideas. I also think that the competition for the most justifiable ideas
> is an interesting and useful frame for thinking about how things like
> philosophies and scientific knowledge and laws generally evolve. Of course,
> the context, resources and the subconscious forces like drives for power
> and influence play a huge role in what a particular group legitimizes.
> Working out those dynamics is a very important enterprise in the social
> sciences.
>
> Best,
> Gregg
>
>
>
> *From:* tree of knowledge system discussion <
> [log in to unmask]> *On Behalf Of *Jamie Dunbaugh
> *Sent:* Tuesday, May 7, 2019 3:46 PM
> *To:* [log in to unmask]
> *Subject:* Re: Description of primary ToK argument for theoretical
> unification of psychology
>
>
>
> Great slides Gregg.
>
> Just some thoughts:
>
> A good theory should make predictions. I made a vague argument to this
> group a while back that I called the Moral Apex. It seems to me that the
> Justification Hypothesis predicts a certain progression in the evolution of
> culture, which I believe to be towards the pragmatic truth. If units of
> culture are selected by justification/utility, culture should move towards
> that which is most justified, but according to what fundamental principles?
> Logical coherence? The operant-hedonic principles beneath culture? .Social
> coherence/harmony/nonzero sum rules? All of the above?
>
>
>
> As culture evolves, the memetic software gets more sophisticated. Culture
> is arguably "evolution with intelligence". Ideas are flung forth
> pseudorandomly, spawned from brains and conversations, and with the
> justification process, bad ideas get filtered out and good ideas are
> distilled and emergent towards greater complexity.  Modern humans who grow
> up today have a ton of mental software installed that has taken eons of
> generations to evolve through the justification process.
>
>
>
> Evolutionary epistemology is a good frame to study cultural evolution.
>
>
>
> Just like the Cambrian explosion was born out of the coming together of
> certain body structures, certain ideas born in our time could be the
> epistemological body-frame for the future of cultural evolution: immortal
> ideas. True memes. The truth is immortal, in a sense.
>
>
>
> A mind that apprehends the truth is liberated from mental cycle of
> death/rebirth. If depression is behavioral investment shutdown due to bad
> ideas, a mind of truth should be free to ascend.
>
>
>
> Jamie
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Sat, May 4, 2019 at 8:49 AM Henriques, Gregg - henriqgx <
> [log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> Dear List,
>
>   Just had a wonderfully stimulating conversation with Alexander Bard on
> the overlap between our visions. After he walked me through some of his
> current work, I then laid out for him more details of the ToK argument.
> Specifically, I was going back to the beginning and clarifying the original
> ToK System argument for the theoretical unification of psychology. I
> thought it might be a summary some might be interested in, especially those
> who have more recently joined the list, so I decided to share here.
>
>
> Best,
>
> Gregg
>
>
>
>
>
> *From:* Henriques, Gregg - henriqgx
> *Sent:* Saturday, May 4, 2019 11:40 AM
> *To:* 'Alexander Bard' <[log in to unmask]>
> *Subject:* RE: Bard vs Henriques Video chat
>
>
>
> Dear Alexander,
>
>  Great talking with you today. I decided I would develop a summary for you
> that sets the stage for diving into my first paper, written in 2003.
>
>
>
>   I am going to start with three central observations. The first
> observation is that every known culture has divided the world up into the
> following four categories: 1) Inanimate objects like rocks; 2) living
> organisms, like plants; 3) animals; and 4) people. Slide one in the
> attached powerpoint includes a picture my daughter drew for me when she was
> four. She came to me and said, “Look, Daddy, I drew your work. See: Rocks,
> Plants, Animals, People!” It also includes Aristotle’s conception of the
> levels of the “soul”, that is vegetative, animal, rational. These four
> categories coorespond to Matter, Life, Mind and Culture on the ToK and need
> to be “drilled in” to clearly understand the full meaning of the ToK. The
> next two slides include Cahoone’s work, which I shared earlier. The point
> here is that is shows there is a modern philosopher who clearly diagnoses
> the fundamental problem in the Western Intellectual Tradition since
> Descartes as being “Mind” versus “Matter” dualism. He calls it the
> fundamental “bipolar disorder” and argues it was fundamentally misguided.
> Instead, he develops the Orders of Nature view. The point simply is to
> illustrate how strikingly similar the two views are. Another KEY point is
> that if we put these slides together, we have a very clear picture of a
> “mental order of nature”. It exists between living creatures (cells and
> plants) and humans building/living in societies. This is crucial to realize
> when we move into the second observation.
>
>
>
>  The second observation is the Problem of Psychology. If there is one
> thing all scholars of the field of psychology agree on, it is that there is
> NO consensus regarding what the field of psychology is about and what is
> its key identity. There are three core/foundational problems or areas of
> disagreement. First, there is the “mind versus behavior” divide. This is
> the question of whether the discipline is about “the mind” and how it
> causes behavior versus whether it is about behavior in and of itself. It is
> the dispute between the cognitivists or mentalists and the Skinnerian
> radical behaviorists. Although the cognitiists have “won” in terms of
> popularity, the basic conceptual issues remain unresolved. The second
> problem is the “animal versus person” divide. This is the problem of
> whether psychology is just about people, about some animals and people or
> is about essentially all animals. The fact is that most of psychology’s
> basic concepts like learning, memory, and perception clearly take place at
> the level of the animal. But the vast majority of psychologists (90-95%)
> deal with humans. The third problem pertains to the identity of the field.
> Is psychology a basic science like biology or is it primarily a health
> profession like medicine or social work? There is NO resolution to these
> issues. (However, if we go back to observation 1, we could see that
> psychology should be about the science of the mental order of nature!)
>
>
>
>   The third observation pertains to E. O. Wilson’s vision of consilience.
> He is the “quintessential” natural scientist who, in 1998, offered a view
> of the unity of knowledge. If you know this book, it is very helpful to
> contrast it with the picture of reality afforded by the ToK. It achieves a
> basic outline of the picture of consilience, but it breaks down at two
> spots. First, as Paul Naour’s book documents, operant theory, which is very
> arguably the FOUNDATION of psychological processes resides at the BASE of
> sociobiology. Thus, the core psychological concept GROUNDS sociobiology
> (many think of sociobiology as grounding psychology!). This is the first
> major error, as it fails to recognize the jump from life/plants into
> animals, because the latter exhibit operant behavior patterns, a
> fundamentally new kind of behavior in the universe. The second major
> breakdown is something Wilson himself readily acknowledges. He lacks a
> theory of Culture and its emergence and how it can function the way it does
> in the natural world.
>
>
>
>   These three observations set the stage for you to enter my first paper
> on my system, The Tree of Knowledge System and the Theoretical Unification
> of Psychology. The final slides provide the visual argument for what the
> paper lays out. Namely, it identifies the current state of the field as
> being confused. The ultimate reason for the confusion is that we lack the
> right systematic metaphysics for science writ large. The ToK provides a new
> systematic metaphysics. It highlights the idea that if we are to properly
> carve nature at her joints, we need to see that there are joint points
> between (a) organisms/Life and animals/mInd and between (b) animals/Mind
> and people/Culture. The paper explains how Behavioral Investment Theory is
> the joint point between Life and Mind and the Justification Hypothesis is
> the joint point between Mind and Culture. Moreover, BIT pulls in Skinner
> with evolutoinary biology and cognitive neuroscience to create a new
> synthesis for understanding the mental order of nature (i.e., animal-mental
> behavior). The JH pulls Freud and aligns him with a proper science of the
> animal mind, and social and personality psychology to give rise to a view
> of human reasoning, self-consciousness and Culture that solves Wilson’s
> missing link (i.e., person-Culture behavior).
>
>
>
> Okay, with that background knowledge, dive in. Look forward to getting
> your thoughts.
>
>
> Best,
>
> Gregg
>
>
>
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-- 
Steven W. Quackenbush, Ph.D., Chair
Division of Psychology & Human Development
University of Maine, Farmington
Farmington, ME 04938
(207) 778-7518
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