From: Technotranscendence (neptune@mars.superlink.net)
Date: Tue Jan 14 2003 - 18:12:08 MST
On Saturday, January 11, 2003 10:40 PM Brett Paatsch
paatschb@ocean.com.au wrote:
>> Fair enough. When you do, let me know
>> what you think of it.
>
> Ok Dan you got me :-) Having seen the
> paper was 28 pages I was not super-inclined
> to read it,
I'll have to see if Horwitz can come out with a Cliff Notes version.:)
> but in a manner that has some resonance
> with a theme in the paper itself, (that "family
> members" will do things for each other that
> they would not do for "anonymous" others
> in society),
This is true. After all, if it were just like any other relation, it
wouldn't be family.
> I have now read the paper due to the
> additional impetus of you (an extropian I
> presume)
You presume correctly -- according to me, though I wonder if others
would agree with my self-categorization here.:)
> wanting to discuss it. Without your interest
> and prompting I would almost certainly have
> chosen to have invested my time in reading
> something else.
I hope you got something from the paper. (See "The Functions of the
Family in the Great Society" by Steven Horwitz
http://it.stlawu.edu/shor/Papers/Functions.htm ) Now, I wouldn't look
at it narrowly as just about family, but also as a paradigm for
extending Hayekian views beyond the market. This might be a fruitful
approach to studying other social phenomena.
> What we do now, that you (I presume:-) )and
> I, have read it,
I have.
> I am not sure though. Any conversation we have
> might now be based on a specific knowledge
> of the paper that might be hard for others who
> don't have the time or inclination to read it to
> follow. This offers a poor return on investment
> effort for a "social politician" like myself but
> what the hell.
It depends. If your goal is merely to talk about what other people are
talking about, then you should only read such things when others talk
about them. I assume that's not your only motivation for reading or
learning.
I also believe others might be inclined
> Horwitz, sets as background the notion that there has been
> some "grand debate" around "the question of the market
> versus the state". He invokes Hayek as am eminent thinker
> in this area and points out that its generally accepted that
> "the market and the state do not exhaust all possible sets
> of social institutions" and that amongst these is the family.
Well, there is kind of an assumption made by many that Hayek's thought
and perhaps that of other Austrian economists can only apply to markets
and market phenomena. Communities, families, and the like are to some,
such as Hodgson, outside this scope, so a usual tact is to diminish
Hayek and the others -- as if their ideas only apply to a thin sliver of
human existence. This has also been used to attack individualism -- by
saying "maybe markets work that way, but people in general don't."
> I think Horwitz's thrusts are essentially correct, if not
> particularly profound, but then often things do look a lot more
> obvious *after* they have been reasonable well explained.
This is true. Once one separates form and function here, one can see
that the changing forms of families -- or the change in which form
predominates -- might be a bad thing. As he points out, many
conservatives tend to think only a certain form of family is correct and
totally ignore function -- or believe the only proper functions can be
carried out in one particular form.
> I think that as transhumanists and extropians are strongly
> concerned with shaping and choosing from possible futures,
> and with taking what has served us well in the past forward
> whilst modifying or dropping what has no longer serves us
> well that the paper makes some interesting suggestions and
> the point on the prudence of decoupling function and form of
> family seems sound.
I raised another point in my reply to Anders. This is that changing
human nature or the context in which we live might also lead to further
changes in family -- ones unplanned. (This is one of the key themes of
Hayek: unintended orders arise. I do not believe full control -- full
planning is possible -- so there'll always be some aspect of spontaneous
ordering in our lives, be they human or posthuman.)
> Imo, the functions of family will largely remain important going
> forward. Whilst the forms of family are, will and should change.
> But this is still not an area of strong interest to me personally
> so I am especially open to alternative views as I have barely
> formed any views of my own at all.
I can understand that. I'm interested in economics and spontaneous
social orders. I think you can use this is an instance to see how
something can be analyzed and this might be applied to other things --
things you might find more interesting.
Cheers!
Dan
http://uweb.superlink.net/neptune/
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