Abstract
Does intense social change (morphogenesis) and the lack of a stable social context spell a crisis for both normative consensus and legal regulation of the social order? In other words, does the valid and effective rule of law depend upon morphostasis in society? Traditionally, normativity, social integration and legal regulation were held to be mutually reinforcing, but this mutual support has weakened greatly over the last three decades as morphogenesis has increased and morphostasis declined. Contributors explore the consequences of three processes:
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That plurality rather than universality characterizes normativity almost everywhere
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That the increase and greater accessibility of cultural ‘variety’ (new ideas, new modes of communication) serves to decrease uniformity in any social area and thus to reduce social integration
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That consequently social regulation is now most concerned with co-ordination and fosters cooperation and redistribution only insofar as these are necessary for co-ordinating social activities and sectors
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Notes
- 1.
This is a specific instance of the more general maxim SAC, where adequate explanations need to make reference to Structure, Culture and Agency. Here N = C, I = A and R = S.
- 2.
Hans Kelsen, generally regarded as the father of legal normativism, was not so far removed in his thinking from Emile Durkheim. To Kelsen, social normativity was foundational to social regulation and the three tasks of law (co-ordination, co-operation and distribution). Legal validity could never be a matter of coercion, that is, the acts of ‘predatory regimes’ whose use of power spelt social malintegration. Durkheim strongly tended to see the degree of social integration as pivotal to the harmony of the three properties but held that re-establishing their harmonious relations at the end of the Nineteenth century necessitated working on all three: teaching common civic morals to restore normative uniformity; introducing common education and occupational associations to re-animate social integration; and abolishing inherited wealth to buttress democracy and render social regulation acceptable.
- 3.
Recourse was made to International Relations to solve this problem as a further form of regress, which is not historically persuasive and fails to acknowledge that such IR were always matters of contestation in the past.
- 4.
The C.S. refers to all items logged into the Universal Archive of the Cultural System that have the dispositional capacity of intelligibility, without depending upon a knowing subject at any given time. Relations between such items are logical ones. S-C refers to the Socio-Cultural level of relations between people and their attempts to persuade, manipulate or mystify others into holding or not challenging their views (Archer 1988). I will return to this distinction later in the chapter.
- 5.
It is the failure to give a satisfactory answer to this question that usually leads to Kelsen being characterized as advancing a ‘sanctions theory’.
- 6.
Because this volume is concerned with normativity and social change, I dwell almost exclusively upon the legal normativists within the philosophy of law. This is not to deny that other schools of legal philosophy have plenty to contribute to this book’s theme as some contributors show.
- 7.
This excludes ‘custom’ or ‘convention’, which might be reducible to what everyone just does in some community. It would thus be susceptible of reduction to aggregate Individualism which is unacceptable because there is no necessity to include any ‘ought’ in its explanations. For instance, some early food gathering tribe may have lived on fruit and nuts, not because they subscribed normatively, as a body, to vegetarianism but because there were few alternative food stuffs or knowledge about them as alternative edibles.
- 8.
Space precludes a detailed discussion of each of these thinkers, who differ in important ontological ways, but can be found in Pierpaolo Donati and Margaret S. Archer, 2015, Chap. 2 ‘The Plural Subject versus the Relational Subject’.
- 9.
Bratman alone resists such ambitions. Searle states his ontological aim as being: ‘[t]o construct an account of social and institutional reality’ (2010: 60 and 1993). Tuomela considers he is writing about ‘the conceptual resources and philosophical prerequisites that a proper understanding and explaining of the social world requires’ presenting ‘almost a philosophical “theory of everything” in the social world relying on the ‘we-perspective’ (2010: vii–viii). Gilbert’s claim is that ‘analysis of our concepts of “shared” action” discovers a structure that is constitutive of social groups as such … going for a walk together may be considered as a paradigm of social phenomena in general.’ (1996: 178). Later on, she amplifies this statement: ‘I believe that the concept of joint commitment is a fundamental social concept – perhaps the fundamental social concept’ (1996: 366). Most of these authors have written subsequent books spelling out the macroscopic implications of the Plural Subject, such as Searle’s 2010, Making the Social World: The Structure of Human Civilization (see also 1995) and Gilbert’s 2006 A Theory of Political Obligation.
- 10.
Gilbert alone makes the occasional reference to ‘supervenience’.
- 11.
The ‘sense of togetherness’, which he holds to be important, is not entailed by Searle’s ‘we think’; because he agrees someone can be misguided or mistaken in thinking it. Thus, he admits that ‘collective intentionality in my head can make a purported reference to other members of a collective independently of the question whether or not there are such members.’ (1990: 407 italics added). In that case, the ‘we’ is wrongly projected because there is no ‘we’ to which ‘we think’ or ‘we intend’ refers or can refer. Thus, he admits that ‘I may be mistaken in taking it that the “we” in “we intend” actually refers to a we’ (1990: 408). It is therefore in order to ask what makes ‘we intending’ something necessarily plural? The response of Pettit and Schweikard seems unavoidable: ‘Not the fact that a number of people instantiate it, since Searle allows that I may instantiate such a state in the mistaken belief that others do so too. So what then? We see no answer in Searle’s work and find his position on this issue inherently obscure.’ (2006: 31–2).
- 12.
If emergence is allowed, then an alternative approach to ‘sharedness’ becomes possible. Donati and Archer (2015) maintain that The Relational Subject can orient his or her actions (goals, intentions, commitments) to the emergent goods and evils they themselves generate (trust, commitment, common projects and certainly togetherness) and their opposites as relational evils. In short, relational subjects can achieve a ‘we-ness’ without our needing to invoke ‘we thinking’ as a necessary mechanism or mediatory process. Indeed, we ourselves explicitly denied that the workings and effects of ‘we-ness’ entailed (i) sharing the same beliefs or coming to do so (Bratman); (ii) positing that we have the same thoughts in our heads (Searle); (iii) having achieved a mutual agreement and sharing a common ethos (Tuomela); or (iv) arriving (explicitly or tacitly) at a joint commitment (Gilbert).
- 13.
Some supporting scientific references accompany this passage.
- 14.
In Mandelbaum’s classic example (1973).
- 15.
Certainly Turner also refers to correction by ‘feedback’ here, but because he does not specify feedback from what, this does not necessitate contextual or conceptual referents and could be satisfied by fanciful references from those persons involved to equally weird referents they find mutually acceptable.
- 16.
Exactly the same was true of Mead’s ‘Generalized Other’. One can only admire his honesty in admitting that once social institutions exceed a certain size it becomes dubious if individuals can continue to take the roles of the other: ‘[T]he community may in its size transcend the social organization, may go beyond the social organization which makes such identification possible. The most striking illustration of that is the economic community. This includes everybody with whom one can trade in any circumstances, but it represents a whole in which it would be next to impossible for all to enter into the Attitudes of others’ (Mead 1934: 326–327 italics added). Mind, Self and Society.
- 17.
In any case, the experiential represents the confines of reality in empiricism and not to Critical Realists whose stratified social ontology of the social also includes the ‘actual’ and ‘real’ levels, inaccessible to human experience.
- 18.
We emphasized in the first of these Volumes (Archer (ed.) 2013: 3–4) reasons why ‘variety’ could not be enumerated and thus have confined ourselves to statements of ‘more’ or ‘less’ of it.
- 19.
This is why it is always important to insist that the delineation of morphogenetic phases is analytical and depends on the research question in hand.
- 20.
‘[T]he central argument is that synthesis is the generic consequences of contingent complementarities refers strictly to the work performed on two consistent elements … and the results of these endeavours which they then offer back to the Cultural System’ (Archer 1988: 258).
- 21.
There are obvious parallels for the founding figures of other world religions.
- 22.
This is exactly my own view of the elaboration of the Cultural System, where I defended the proposition that ‘There is elaboration of the CS due to the S-C level modifying current logical relationships and introducing new ones’ (Archer 1988: 227–269).
- 23.
We have rehearsed some of the pros and cons raised by this proposition in the conclusion to Donati and Archer (2015), especially pgs 327–331.
- 24.
As I wrote in Archer (1988: 244).
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Archer, M.S. (2016). Introduction: Does Social Morphogenesis Threaten the Rule of Law?. In: Archer, M. (eds) Morphogenesis and the Crisis of Normativity . Social Morphogenesis. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-28439-2_1
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