From: Hans Ehrbar <ehrbar-AT-lists.econ.utah.edu>
Subject: pon3-24a
Date: Sat, 14 Apr 2001 18:48:35 -0600


*Some Emergent Properties of Social Systems*

Now if social activity consists, analytically, in
production, that is in work {PON3:38} on and the
transformation of given objects, and if such work
constitutes an analogue of natural events, then we need an
analogue for the mechanisms that generate it.  If social
structures constitute the appropriate mechanism-analogue,
then an important difference must be immediately registered
-- in that, unlike natural mechanisms, they exist only in
virtue of the activities they govern and cannot be
empirically identified independently of them.  Because of
this, they must be social products themselves.  Thus people
in their social activity must perform a double function:
they must not only make social products, but make the
conditions of their making, that is reproduce (or to a
greater or lesser extent transform) the structures governing
their substantive activities of production.  Because social
structures are themselves social products, they are
themselves possible objects of transformation and so may be
only relatively enduring.  Moreover the differentiation and
development of social activities (as in the `division of
labour' and `expanded reproduction' respectively) implies
that they are interdependent; so social structures may be
only relatively autonomous.  Society may thus be conceived
as an articulated ensemble of such relatively independent
and enduring generative structures; that is, as a complex
totality subject to change both in its components and their
interrelations.  Now, as social structures exist only in
virtue of the activities they govern, they do not exist
independently of the conceptions that the agents possess of
what they are doing in their activity, that is, of some
theory of these activities.  Because such theories are
themselves social products, they are themselves possible
objects of transformation and so they too may be only
relatively enduring (and autonomous).  Finally, because
social structures are themselves social products, social
activity must be given a social explanation, and cannot be
explained by reference to non-social parameters (though the
latter may impose constraints on the possible forms of
social activity).

Some ontological limitations on a possible naturalism may be
immediately derived from these emergent social properties,
on the assumption (to be vindicated below) that society is
sui generis real:

   1.  Social structures, unlike natural structures, do not
     exist independently of the activities they govern.
   2.  Social structures, unlike natural structures, do not
     exist independently of the agents' conceptions of what
     they are doing in their activity.
   3.  Social structures, unlike natural structures, may be
     only relatively enduring (so that the tendencies they
     ground may not be universal in the sense of space-time
     invariant).

These all indicate real differences in the possible objects
of knowledge in the case of the natural and social
sciences.  (The internal complexity and interdependence of
social structures do not mark a necessary {PON3:39}
difference from natural ones.)  They are not of course
unconnected, though one should be wary of drawing
conclusions of the sort: `Society exists only in virtue of
human activity.  Human activity is conscious.  Therefore
consciousness brings about change'.  For (a) social changes
need not be consciously intended and (b) if there are social
conditions for consciousness, changes in it can in principle
be socially explained.  Society, then, is an articulated
ensemble of tendencies and powers which, unlike natural
ones, exist only as long as they (or at least some of them)
are being exercised; are exercised in the last instance via
the intentional activity of human beings; and are not
necessarily space-time invariant.



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