Abstractions

Monday, February 10, 2020

Humans need to use a lot of abstract concepts to explain the way they understand themselves, other humans, and the interrelations between them. A lot of imaginary entities and classifications are involved.

For example, culture is an abstraction. It has no real existence. This is true of society, nationality, and the economy as well. Only individual human beings truly, physically, exist. Most importantly, their brains, which contain patterns of connections that we collectively refer to as cultural or social norms.

Institutions, practices, styles, discourse, and even languages are not real things. They are simply generalizations based off of the behavior of many people. Individual behavior is real; so are the patterns in individual brains that correspond to the ability to process and interpret language and understand the behavior of others. To speak of “culture” is simply to generalize based on similarities in the structures of many individual brains that lead to similar interpretations and behavior (including communication with others).

“Society” is even more abstract: it is a generalization of the way people’s behavior towards each other is affected by perceptions like rank, social status, legal standing, and the like. For example, if a group of individuals recognizes ownership of land, each will restrict their movements and actions based on this belief, in order to physically avoid occupying space they accept as “owned” by another person. In actuality there is nothing distinguishing that space from any other location. But our ideas and perceptions cause us to act as if there is.

We call a mental structure that many people share a “cultural value” and their resulting behavior towards each other “social norms” or the like. This resulting behavior may ultimately cause an “institution” to arise, such as a police force. But in reality this is simply individuals deciding to act in certain ways because their brains have similar structures through which they understand the behavior of others, including what is proper and improper. These structures validate ownership of objects, structures, and geographical locations. They validate written codes (laws) that describe what constitutes violation of ownership and how individuals should react to this violation.

The idea of a “police force” is an interesting one. In reality, it is a group of individuals who act similarly because of similar mental structures we might refer to as codes of behavior. They gather in the same building at specified times, listen to the same people direct their behavior, follow those directions (more or less), and correctly foresee that monetary and other rewards (status, power, etc.) will follow. But there may be great differences between what we would call their motivations for this behavior. Some may want tangible (economic) rewards above all else, some may feel duty, or be following the actions of a parent or other family member, or be attracted by the possibility of exercising power (legitimated control over the behavior of others). Mainly it will be a mix of all of these things. We abstractly call a group of individuals who act in such similar ways (meeting together in the same building, donning the same clothing and equipment, performing similar routine actions) a “police force” and call that an “institution.” Other cultures have similar things but with somewhat different mental structures involved–thus having different ideas about what a member of the police should do.

Of course, we have to make such generalizations in order to understand and predict the behavior of the people around us. But keeping the illusory nature of culture and society in mind can be helpful. For example, we should remember that no one individual has all the mental structures associated with a particular society or culture. Also, society has fuzzy edges. Some people are mostly part of it, others are marginalized or have different values or expectations, others do not partake. “Society” does not cover all groups of individuals who act similarly. By society we normally mean a large body of people who occupy a certain range of geographical areas, share structures like language, are governed (or govern) by common “laws” (a particular type of mental structures which control the evaluation of behavior and predictions about its consequences), and allow the same subset of individuals to determine what these “laws” should be.