Distributed Truth-Telling: A Model for Moral Revolution and Epistemic Justice in Australia

Economists on Darwin's Theory of Social Evolution and Human Behaviour

In the paper, I first consider how his theory of social norms is connected to his theory of social evolution by examining the importance of learning in his theory of both social norms and social evolution. Then I turn to David Owen and Amy Allen's critiques of Jürgen Habermas. My aim is to develop their critique of Habermas by elucidating an important but neglected distinction between the developmental logic and the developmental dynamics in Habermas's theory of social evolution. Drawing on this distinction, I claim that Habermas's theory is problematic in that he underestimates the importance of the developmental dynamics. By introducing the distinction between individual learning and social learning, I also question his account of progress as accumulative experience of learning. This is because, unlike cumulative culture at the level of phylogenesis, individuals ontogenetically experience a kind of non‐cumulative social learning. Unlike cumulative culture, each individual has to undergo a kind of non‐cumulative social learning. The problem is that Habermas conceives the learning process too narrowly such that learning does not guarantee social evolution.

Evolution, Natural and Social: Philosophical Aspects

Evolution, Natural and Social: Philosophical Aspects

Blundering into Wisdom? The Missing Elements of Hayek's Spontaneous Order Liberalism

Hayek's Theory of Social Evolution in the Light of Darwin's Descent of Man

In this paper I seek to show how cultural niche construction theory offers the potential to extend the human evolutionary story beyond the Pleistocene, through the Neolithic, towards the kind of very large-scale societies in which we live today. The study of the human past has been compartmentalised, each compartment using different analytical vocabularies, so that their accounts are written in mutually incompatible languages. In recent years social, cognitive and cultural evolutionary theories, building on a growing body of archaeological evidence, have made substantial sense of the social and cultural evolution of the genus Homo. However, specialists in this field of studies have found it difficult to extend their kind of analysis into the Holocene human world. Within southwest Asia the three or four millennia of the Neolithic period at the beginning of the Holocene represents a pivotal point, which saw the transformation of human society in the emergence of the first large-scale, permanent communities, the domestication of plants and animals, and the establishment of effective farming economies. Following the Neolithic, the pace of human social, economic and cultural evolution continued to increase. By 5000 years ago, in parts of southwest Asia and northeast Africa there were very large-scale urban societies, and the first large-scale states (kingdoms). An extension of cultural niche construction theory enables us to extend the evolutionary narrative of the Pleistocene into the Holocene, opening the way to developing a single, long-term, evolutionary account of human history.

This article, which defines the relation between sociobiology and other kinds of evolutionary account, and between meme-based versions and population-level learning accounts, also tries to sharpen the understanding of the promises of cultural evolutionary theories. Charles Darwin's synthesis does not always place natural selection in the foreground. One very specific source of skepticism is directed at the use some cultural evolutionists make of the meme concept. Theories of cultural evolution need not, and often do not, support the meme concept. A casual reading of the meme concept might lead one to think that cultural evolutionary theories cast humans in a passive role. Developmental systems theory may present the most likely site for a full reconciliation between social anthropology and cultural evolutionary theory.

This research reviews Ahmad Rajafi's thoughts on Indonesia's Islamic family law reform movement. Utilising literature-based research with qualitative research and descriptive-analytic analysis, where the primary data source is Ahmad Rajafi's works. Then, the data is processed and analysed using two main theories: Social Evolution theory and Conflict theory. The results show that from a historical perspective, the Old Order reflected early attempts to remove colonial traces in family law, focusing on harmonisation between religion and national interests. The New Order involved conflict between religious groups over the 1974 Marriage Law, with concrete steps to achieve harmony between Islamic law and national interests by establishing the Compilation of Islamic Law. The Reformation era marked the debate on polygamy and the search for an Indonesian identity in family law, reflecting the complexity of Indonesia's journey towards a just and inclusive legal system. In the social evolution and conflict theory analysis, family law reform is not only linear but influenced by conflict and changes in social values. This process reflects an active struggle to achieve gender justice and maintain local identity in the Indonesian context. This research concludes that Ahmad Rajafi's thoughts on family law change not only reflect adaptation to social and cultural changes but also involve an active struggle to achieve gender justice and maintain local identity in the Indonesian context. Keywords: Ahmad Rajafi, Reform, Family Law, Indonesia, Social Evolution, Conflict Theory

It has long been a point of controversy amongst Marxists whether Marx formulated, or even meant to formulate, a stage-like theory of human social evolution, as was the fashion amongst the liberal thinkers, and as indeed it became official Soviet ideology from Stalin’s time. According to this Soviet interpretation, Marx was supposed to have delineated five progressive stages of human socio-economic formations: the ‘classless’ primitive community, the slave-based society of classical times, the feudal society based on serfdom, the modern bourgeois society based on capitalism, and lastly the advanced ‘classless’ society of the future, i.e. communist society. This unilinear schema was thought to be not only a logical but also a chronological progression of human social life. When applied to the now underdeveloped world, it permitted the Soviets to adopt an ‘interventionist’ view of social change in these societies, uncannily similar to that of the bourgeois modernisation theorists. Both Soviet and bourgeois theorists believed that the laws and generalisations derived from the past experience of the nations now affluent could serve as a lesson for the present and the future of those who were still poor.

Spencer's sustained opposition to statutory welfare provisions, based on his theory of social and general evolution, is generally familiar. Much less familiar, however, are his positive arguments, made at various points in his Principles of Sociology, Principles of Ethics and other places, in favour of what he calls ‘positive private beneficence’ (which today would be called ‘informal welfare’ or ‘informal care’). Unfamiliar also are his analysis of charitable organisations and his support for an expansion of the administration of civil justice to enhance welfare. In fact, Spencer was laying out a form of welfare pluralism at the close of the last century. This article explores these matters. In particular it argues that Spencer's work on these matters, or rather its neglect, should be seen as significant in the history of social theory and welfare and in understanding the present day rediscovery of informal welfare. It also demonstrates that Spencer's work on private beneficence and the administration of justice is important for understanding his theory of social evolution.

Goddesses and the Divine Feminine: A Western Religious History. By Rosemary Radford Ruether. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005. Pp. ? + 382; acknowledgments, introduction, photographs, illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. $29.95 cloth, $18.95 paper) Contemporary popular culture is now so full of claims surrounding the divine feminine drat it's difficult to sort them out. Some ideas include that early human cultures were peaceful and productive because they worshipped goddesses; that the gnostic gospels preserve the idea of the feminine divine, and for that reason were excluded from orthodoxy; that the worship of the Virgin Mary is a continuation of this veneration, a form of feminist resistance to patriarchal oppression; that Hildegard of Bingen was an early feminist theologian; that the Mexican Virgin of Guadalupe is really an ancient Aztec goddess, Tonatzin. Many of these claims have become dogma in their own right among practitioners of feminist spirituality and New Age religions. But is there any truth to them? Feminist theologian Rosemary Radford Ruether comes to the rescue with this gem - a scholarly study of the female faces of the divine in their various iterations, from prehistoric times into the present, based on solid evidence rather than wishful thinking, and written with the insight of a religious historian. Ruether's central goal in this book is not to sort out the relative truth or fiction of competing claims, but to trace the history that connects ancient religions with contemporary feminist attempts to re-examine, revive and reclaim aspects of them for the purpose of building a more satisfying and just way of being in the world. As such, it grows out of her own lifelong experience as a both a theologian and a politically committed feminist. Her hope is that this book will be of value to feminists all along the religious spectrum, from Jewish and Christian spiritual feminists, to radical witches and neo-pagans, in that it illustrates their shared roots and common values and works to create alliances among them. But it will also appeal to a much broader audience seeking historically accurate information about putative links between early religions and contemporary adaptations of them. It would be ideal for use in classes on women and religion, and more broadly on Western religious history. Ruether started her career as a religious historian of the ancient Near East, and it's here that she begins her story by tackling the problems inherent in teasing out clues about gender and religious praxis from prehistoric archeological evidence, a partial record of material culture that is notoriously difficult to interpret. In order to properly contextualize contemporary archeological ways of understanding evidence, she must also present a history of earlier archeological theories of cultural and social evolution, including nineteenth-century models (and their twentieth-century redactions) that are often adopted uncritically and enthusiastically by some spiritual feminists. That she does this as clearly and judiciously as she does, despite lacking archeological training, is to her credit. …

I argue for the merits of studying historical moral revolutions to inform moral and political philosophy. Such a research program is not merely of empirical, historical interest but has normative implications. To explain why, I situate the proposal in the tradition of naturalized epistemology. As Alison M. Jaggar and other scholars have argued, a naturalistic approach is characteristic of much feminist philosophy. Accordingly, I argue that the study of moral revolutions would be especially fruitful for feminist moral and political philosophers.

The new book from Larry Siedentop, acclaimed author of Democracy in Europe, Inventing the Individual is a highly original rethinking of how our moral beliefs were formed and their impact on western society today. Magisterial, timeless, beautifully written ...Siedentop has achieved something quite extraordinary. He has explained us to ourselves. (Spectator). This ambitious and stimulating book describes how a moral revolution in the first centuries AD - the discovery of human freedom and its universal potential - led to a social revolution in the west. The invention of a new, equal social role, the individual, gradually displaced the claims of family, tribe and caste as the basis of social organisation. Larry Siedentop asks us to rethink the evolution of the ideas on which modern societies and government are built, and argues that the core of what is now our system of beliefs emerged much earlier than we think. The roots of liberalism - belief in individual liberty, in the fundamental moral equality of individuals, that equality should be the basis of a legal system and that only a representative form of government is fitting for such a society - all these, Siedentop argues, were pioneered by Christian thinkers of the Middle Ages, who drew on the moral revolution carried out by the early church. It was the arguments of canon lawyers, theologians and philosophers from the eleventh to the fourteenth century, rather than the Renaissance, that laid the foundation for liberal democracy. There are large parts of the world where other beliefs flourish - fundamentalist Islam, which denies the equality of women and is often ambiguous about individual rights and representative institutions; quasi-capitalist China, where a form of utilitarianism enshrines state interests even at the expense of justice and liberty. Such beliefs may foster populist forms of democracy. But they are not liberal. In the face of these challenges, Siedentop urges that understanding the origins of our own liberal ideas is more than ever an important part of knowing who we are. LARRY SIEDENTOP was appointed to the first post in intellectual history ever established in Britain, at Sussex University in the 1970's. From there he moved to Oxford, becoming Faculty Lecturer in Political Thought and a Fellow of Keble College. His writings include a study of Tocqueville, an edition of Guizot's History of Civilization in Europe, and Democracy in Europe, which has been translated into a dozen languages. Siedentop was made CBE in 2004. Praise for the book: One of the most stimulating books of political theory to have appeared in many years ...a refreshingly unorthodox account of the roots of modern liberalism in medieval Christian thinking. (John Gray, Literary Review). A brave, brilliant and beautifully written defence of the western tradition. (Paul Lay, History Today). An engrossing book of ideas ...illuminating, beautifully written and rigorously argued. (Kenan Malik, Independent). A most impressive work of philosophical history. (Robert Skidelsky).

Why do many parents expect more help from their children during COVID-19? A qualitative follow-up to quantitative survey data