Society: the sum of parts or a whole without parts?

Economics Political Theory
1

Rothbard makes the argument that society is the sum of parts

The fallacious use of a collective noun like “nation,” similar in this
respect to “society,” has been trenchantly pointed out by the historian

Parker T. Moon:
When one uses the simple monosyllable “France” one thinks of France
as a unit, an entity. When . . . we say “France sent her troops to
conquer Tunis”—we impute not only unit but personality to the
country. The very words conceal the facts and make international
relations a glamorous drama in which personalized nations are the
actors, and all too easily we forget the flesh-and-blood men and women
who are the true actors. . . if we had no such word as “France”… then
we should more accurately describe the Tunis expedition in some such
way as this: “A few of these thirty-eight million persons sent thirtythousand others to conquer Tunis.” This way of putting the fact immediately suggests a question, or rather a series of questions. Who
were the “few”? Why did they send the thirty thousand to Tunis? And
why did these obey? Empire-building is done not by “nations,” but by
men. The problem before us is to discover the men, the active,
interested minorities in each nation, who are directly interested in
imperialism and then to analyze the reasons why the majorities pay the
expense and fight the war necessitated by imperialist expansion.6

The individualist view of “society” has been summed up in the phrase:
“Society” is everyone but yourself. Put thus bluntly, this analysis can be
used to consider those cases where “society” is treated, not only as a
superhero with superrights, but as a supervillain on whose shoulders
massive blame is placed.

Mises says that such distinction is irrelevant

This methodological individualism has been vehemently attacked by
various metaphysical schools and disparaged as a nominalistic fallacy. The
notion of an individual, say the critics, is an empty abstraction. Real man is
necessarily always a member of a social whole. It is even impossible to
imagine the existence of a man separated from the rest of mankind and not
connected with society. Man as man is the product of a social evolution. His
most eminent feature, reason, could only emerge within the framework of
social mutuality. There is no thinking which does not depend on the concepts
and notions of language. But speech is manifestly a social phenomenon. Man is always the member of a collective. As the whole is both logically and temporally prior to its parts or members, the study of the individual is posterior to the study of society. The only adequate method for the scientific
treatment of human problems is the method of universalism or collectivism.
Now the controversy whether the whole or its parts are logically prior is
vain. Logically the notions of a whole and its parts are correlative. As logical
concepts they are both apart from time.

I have heard many intelligent individuals propose how anyone can even depict an individual without a society?

Is this simply a which came first the chicken or the egg question?

2

Society is the interaction of its parts.

In the case of a libertarian society, society is the interaction of its parts without the initiation of force.

3

In the case of a libertarian society, society is the interaction of its parts without the initiation of force.

I would add to this by saying that “society” is merely a term which describes the circumstance of voluntary interaction and cooperation of individuals.

4

Being individualist is not being agaisnt society or social interactions and wanted to be alone. This is a fallacy that collectivist like to repeat.

Individualism is a philosophy about social interaction as well as a method to analize social interactions. It analizes social interactions analizing the interactions between individuals.

5

Is a TV more than the sum of its molecules? Is a molecule more than the some of its atoms?

6

  1. “is more than” is an opinion, its subjective. The fact that some atoms are forming part of a television gives the whole things certain characteristics. If they had another form they had anothers. If that is better, worse, more or less is subjective.

  2. Atoms are not concious or dont have will.

7

I don’t see the point. A shatteres TV is useless despite all the particles being there. Similarly, a human civilization is not a bunch of individuals, but a society.

8

???

If the TV does not work it means ll the particles are not there.

But is his suppose to mean something relevant? Because I am trying to get some deep second meaning but it just seems empty charlatanery to me.

???

A bunch of human interacting is a society. I dont see how it can be one and not the other.

Whats all this supposed to mean?

9

A TV is a TV, the molecule are the molecules , the atoms are the atoms, a heart that doesn’t beat is still a perfect heart. All that matters is that an agent that recognizes itself as the actor and describer… society is incapable of doing such a thing. Society (or man, organism, etc) is, at best, a convenient categorization. But even as an arbitrary but useful catagorization in some areas it is useless in others. If society was an acting agent, it would take care of its own affairs, there would be no need to worry on about it. Let society concern itself with society, let man concern itself with man, and let yourself concern yourself with yourself; that is all you can really do anyways, it is impossible to concern yourself with anything else, so you may as well drop any other pretense.

As acting agent, all you can do is describe your state of being to the environment around you. You are the totality and sum of everything meaningful whose state of being is normativily indescribable by language. You are the “all and all” unto yourself, forever perfect at every moment with nothing greater; the minute you are not is the minute you cease Being.

10

I am only saying what counts as acting agent depends on the subject of analysis. “Germany invaded France” makes perfect sense. And it is true.

11

I guess to be historically acurate, Rothbard is right. Let’s say “Germany invaded France”. This immediately implies “All Germany invaded France”. Is this statement true? Of course not. Some people had to stay behind and make the weapons and take care of the children. It would be more accurate to say “X number of Germans invaded France” as this can give an idea what percentage of the young male population invaded so as historians we can get a better picture as to the cause and effect relationship that existed when those troops entered France.

For the sake of greater accuracy we can also talk about those Germans who were also oppossed to the war and went to prison for their beliefs. It can also be added that we can begin to look more deeply into the war like, the number of troops married, with children, did they have jobs before the war, income etc. To say “Germany invaded France” is a way to ignore the fact that not all those who fought the war were the same. Even a military analysis would have to look at the various ranks of soldiers, the technological uses, the speed by which the soldiers moved, moral of the troops, dissent at home, etc. Its really a question of accuracy and percision so that we can get the whole picture so that we don’t miss the trees for the forest.

Also, in speaking of the tv example above, if I take out one part of the tv and it ceases to operate, is it a tv or just a box? Each individual part is neccissary for the tv to operate just like how each individual cooperates to make all of society work. Now of course society is not dependent upon every individual, but without all those individual actiors society cannot exist. Furthermore, each person in society is different and has different wants at different times in their lives. This was a key for Hayek’s analysis on the problem of knowledge. Without taking the individual into account we could have never discovered the problems inherrent in central planning.

12

Its just human abstractions.

When I say I turn on the tv, does it mean that the particles forming the tv dont matter or are not going to interact like they allways interact? Does it mean that the tv is now an indivisible block and the parts are complete useless?

No, it just means that the abstraction that I need for quickly and efficiently express myself its the tv, not each individual part. When you say France and Germany went to war you are just using the abstraction that suits what you are trying to comunicate, but it does not mean that France and Germany are not a bunch of people and their circumpstances.

Seriously, this all keeps sounding like mambo-jambo to me.

13

But Germany invaded France does not mean all germans went to France.

It would not be more accurate, because it was not just gang with X members that invaded.

This doesn’t mean only individual can be taken into account. Not even that they must be.

14

This doesn’t mean only individual can be taken into account. Not even that they must be.

Correct, but it does mean that only individuals are taking things into account.

If Germany invades France, it is simply because it is the individual’s concept and recognition as to what Germany is. Perhaps it wasn’t the “real” Germany because it was a united Germany, a Catholic Germany, a Protestant Germany, A secular Germany, or a Nazi Germany; so one individual may say the Nazis invaded France, not “true Germans”. Or perhaps the Germans simply entered Germany ( Alsace-Lorraine).

It is true that people tend to organize under hierarchical structures that have a similar culture, which is what makes the categorization of groups or entities useful and possible, what is not true though is that this categorization actually “exists” in any normative sense. It is still all based off of individual acting agents, which for one reason or another, have enough congruency in their decision making to coordinate an event like Germany invading France a possible narrative construct.

Q: When is Theseus’ ship no longer Theseus’ ship?

A: Whenever you say so, as the conditions of yourself and the ship are forever and continually changing its state of being through time. " You" and “the ship” can only exist as an actual entity in being and time, and not as an ideal mental exercise. Moreover, the ship only exists as “Theseus’ Ship” due to the acting agent defining it as such.

15

If the ship can only be Thesus’s ship if the agent defines it as such, then what if someone takes the ship from him without his consent? He can claim the ship is his, but unless the ship is present and he can use it as he sees fit, then it cannot be his. The problem i see with your theory is that it relies to heavily on the use of terms as they are while ignoring the qualities that make up those terms in the first place. For Thesus to have the ship be really his, he must be able to use it and have it recognized as such by others. If the legitmacy of the ship is contested and taken from him so he is unable to use at as he is willing, then he can say the ship is his till he is blue in the face, but that won’t change the fact that it really isn’t.

For another example, let’s take an apple. An apple is made of several qualities by which it can be compared to something like an orange, watermelon, or steam engine. Humans use language in order to provide a medium for these ideas so that they can be understood and catagorized in our minds through their various qualities. A ship is a ship because it contains all the individual qualities that make it a ship (rudder, sail, oars, boyancy etc.)The name we give it is meaningless as long is it is understood by the actor to be such. I agree that a ship may be used for something else (like shelter) but that is only because of the person’s lack of knowledge or subjective use of the ship, not because the ship cannnot perform the functions neccissary for it to be a ship because it is missing some quality as such.

Now, going back to the question of can we look at society without the lenses of understanding the individual. You say that being a German is only a construct of an idea, but that is missing the point. We are not interested in why the German is a German, only that he is catagorized as such for the purpose of explaining who the invading army is. To understand this army, the individual parts (soldiers, generals, etc) are neccissary in classifying it as such so that it may be understood to be an army. Without these classifications we can never really understand the events that took place. The individual parts are then essential for understanding and cannot be left out if we are to understand the difference between the Germans and French from being food an pastry. Our perceptions and sensations would be meaningless if we cannot attribute such and such qualites to something of meaning. All of the things I am saying would be useless if the reader did not understand the individual ideas behind each of my words.

Also, the question goes on further as to provide accuracy. When I say Germany invaded France, I am uninterested that other people’s invaded France, only that the Germans did so.How do I know they were Germans? By the qualities that are signifying that they are indeed distinct enough to be considered as such. It does not matter whehter such qualities are by their own admission, flags, language, etc. The invading armies cannot exist without the individual soldiers. No army has ever existed prior to their being soldiers, like how society can never precede the fact that thier are individuals who decide to band together and form one.

When I say an X number of soldiers entered Germany and several characteristics of those soldiers, I change the interpretation of the war from the single German entitiy, to the X number of soldiers who are part of the invading German army. Which gives a more accurate picture, Germany invaded or specifying the parts that made the invading German military(how many germans invaded, what was their military capacity, how much money per soldier is being spent on the war) .

For Hayek’s analysis, he used the perception that individual acts are made of certain parts, such as choice, ranking, and the concept of ends and means. His theory rested that only an individual can know these things as they are constantly changing their value order of wants for whatever reason at whatever given time. Only the individual on the ground could possibly know his desires and the way in which his ends can be fulfilled at every given moment in time. The central planner could never just put these individual’s into aggregates and plan out the want’s and desires of the masses and how to best allocate those reasources to fulfill those wants. Without the notiion that the individual makes up society or aggregates and the qualites that make up those individuals’ actions, this analysis would be impossible and the economy would appear to be “Managable” by some centralized authority when in fact looking at the qualties inherent in the individual it is not.

16

He can claim the ship is his, but unless the ship is present and he can use it as he sees fit, then it cannot be his. The problem i see with your theory is that it relies to heavily on the use of terms as they are while ignoring the qualities that make up those terms in the first place. For Thesus to have the ship be really his, he must be able to use it and have it recognized as such by others. If the legitmacy of the ship is contested and taken from him so he is unable to use at as he is willing, then he can say the ship is his till he is blue in the face, but that won’t change the fact that it really isn’t

Are you refering to the “Theseus’ Ship” problem in the context of a sum and parts question? That is how I was using it. When I refer to “Theseus’ Ship” it wasn’t about a man named Theseus actually owning a ship, think of it as “A ship named Theseus” if that helps.

17

Yes it does help clarify your argument and I thank you. I think I can still explain it in a different context to still keep my argument in tact. I’ll read the article and think about it some more. Thank you for the clarification this will be a good thinking exercise for me :slight_smile:

18

This. The dichotomy is also false and meaningless. Communication is impossible without using commonly accepted and meaningful abstractions. The wind is blowing (What is wind, and is all of it really blowing?). I am reading (What am I and is all of me really reading?). Pretty much every standard sentence can be dissected like this.

I am not sure about the time length but I read somewhere that no atom/molecule comprising a human body has been there six years ago. If the heap of atoms that is “me” now has nothing to do with the “me” heap of atoms from six years ago, what is really “me”? I would say that the “me” abstraction is commonly accepted and meaningful, whereas the ‘parts vs whole’ dichotomy is irrelevant and meaningless.

Z.

19

–Just probing here… but take the sentence

“I am hungery”

“I” is not a variable, it is predefined by the writer of that sentence (though it may vary to another individual)

“am” is temporal. It explains a time i.e. the present, which also is not variable (though i asume the present cannot clearly be defined)

“hungery” is the action which merely explains that the predefined “I” wants to eat at the defined time “am” which was the present

20

Is your left ear part of “I”? Is it hungry too?