Thread by @Helenreflects

Thinking of William James' critique of Herbert Spencer's theory of psychology and what it can mean for us, especially today. 1/
Paper by James here
unav.es/gep/RemarksOnS…

Herbert Spencer (1820 – 1903) was a proponent of social Darwinism and he's noted for the phrase "survival of the fittest". His book The Principles of Psychology (published 1855, before Darwin) aimed to put psychology on the footing of biology, with laws that we could discover 2/

Though the first edition of Spencer's Principles of Psychology was published before Origin of Species (1859), i.e., Darwinian, he was wanted to apply evolutionary principles to psychology - notably Lamarck, and he tried to understand animal psychology as adaptation. 3/

Spencer thought that psychology, a science that scarcely existed when he wrote, could be seen as a "specialized part of biology", and biology in its turn is a specialized part of Geogeny [Geology]" (Principles of Psychology, part 1). His aims were to unify the sciences. 4/

Now, what's James' problem with Spencer's laudable attempt to try to reduce psychology to biological principles of adaptation and survival? Well, for James, Spencer's mistake is trying to reduce mental life to concerns of survival and reproduction 5/

If cognition is only about an animal's representation of the environment (to help it survive and reproduce), then what of "all sentiments, all aesthetic impulses, all religious emotions and personal affections?" asks James. 6/

In Spencer's view the summum of mental development would be "a creature of superb cognitive endowments... in whom all these gifts [of perception and cognition] were swayed by the single passion of love of life, of survival at any price." 7/

Would we admire such an uber-survivalist being? We wouldn't, according to James. "Simply because, to common sense, survival is only one out of many interests" and these reductionist attempts to see psychology as a function of biology don't do our interests justice. 8/

"What are these interests? Most men would reply that they are all that makes survival worth securing. The social affections, all the various forms of play, the thrilling intimations of art, the delights of philosophic contemplation..." 9/

"the rest of religious emotion, the joy of moral self-approbation, the charm of fancy and of wit - some or all of these are absolutely required to make the notion of mere existence tolerable".
Here, James makes important claims that deserve our continued attention, I think. 10/

James also continues to say that "the story-teller, the musician, the theologian, the actor, ..., have never lacked means of support, however helpless they might individually have been to conform with those outward relations which we know as the powers of nature."
Why?
11/

Here James invokes a notion that is crucial for all American pragmatists, namely the interconnectedness of the individual in a broader society (see als Dewey on this).
"To the individual man, as a social being, the interests of his fellow are a part of his environment." /12

"If his powers correspond to the wants of this social environment, he may survive, even though he be ill-adapted to the natural or "outer" environment."
Super-important. Our environment is also and maybe *especially* our social environment /13

Here's where James has something important to tell us too.
There's a continued assault on humanities, especially in education. Right-wing politicians tell us that humanities don't matter economically, that we shouldn't train folks in e.g., philosophy, English, or fine arts /14

Those right-wing politicians buy into a social Darwinism (very Spencerian) where everything we do has to benefit the economy, where we, like the narrow-focused being James rejects, would focus all our efforts on getting wealthier and producing goods and wealth /15

James also rejects a more expansive notion of Spencerian focus on survival, where "all the luxuriant foliage of ideal interests [are] present in the tribe.. by virtue of the fact that they minister in an indirect way to the survival of the tribe as a whole?" /16

Interestingly, I've seen such Spencerian defenses of free inquiry especially in STEM and also a little bit (if there's money left over...) in the humanities. It's okay because ultimately that free play will lead us to find things that help us survive /17

In this view, it's fine to have e.g., work in theoretical physics or in pure math, because some of this stuff *will* eventually become useful. Hurray for mathematicians who were interested in knots as their work helps us unravel the structure of viruses.
James rejects this /18

"If ministry to survival be the sole criterion of mental excellence, then luxury and amusement, Shakespeare, Beethoven, Plato, and Marcus Aurelius, stellar spectroscopy, diatom markings, and nebular hypotheses are by-products on too wasteful a scale" /19

And indeed, we see it now with the assault of governments everywhere on those things that make human lives worthwhile--not the drudgery of survival but beauty, a sense of wonder, aesthetic delights, free philosophical inquiry--instrumentalizing our liberal arts won't work /20

Because the Spencerian social Darwinist could always say: it's too much! We don't need all that Beethoven, and Shakespeare, why should we still read Mary Shelley or Confucius, it doesn't do enough for us, not enough bang for our buck. 21/

The pandemic and the hasty makeshift policies in its wake have shown the failure of this kind of instrumentalizing thinking. We are now in a situation where, e.g., in my city, bars have been open since May, yet playgrounds are closed indefinitely to mitigate Covid-19 spread /22

Playgrounds pose much lower risk of Covid-19 transmission compared to bars. But bars help the economy, playgrounds don't. Rather than buy into this applied Darwinism where survival at all costs is now the economy at all costs, we should take a step back /23

And ask, with James, what makes survival worth securing? What makes our mere existence tolerable? Since we are creatures who live in communities, how should we structure them to improve our wellbeing? /end