With the formation of new institutions and an increasingly broad conversation about the need to renew American innovation, the topic of progress has been much discussed recently. Of course, everyone is for progress. Everyone wants to move forward, or to advance, or to move toward betterment. The trouble comes in defining what progress actually is. Occasionally this is easy, but more often—especially in the context of public policy with its multifaceted problems, imperfect knowledge and many tradeoffs—it is hard to define what progress means in practice.
An often-overlooked starting point in defining progress is what evidence to consider and what methods should be used to evaluate that evidence. For a long while now, reason and rationality, with their attendant prioritization of propositional knowledge (that is, the kind of knowledge related to the truth value of claims made with articulated statements), have become the ultimate method of analyzing problems and solutions. However, a growing number of thinkers are making the case for different forms of knowledge. To truly make progress on today’s problems, we must supplement propositional knowledge with the wisdom to be gained from long-standing traditions and social norms.
A recent EconTalk episode, in which Russ Roberts talks with Moshe Koppel about norms, tradition and resilient societies, illustrates this different form of knowledge. To grossly oversimplify, Russ and Moshe discuss the latter’s book, “Judaism Straight Up: Why Real Religion Endures,” and the role that religions and their related traditions play in guiding our norms and behaviors toward productive ends, even as we are often unaware of how they function. Chesterton’s fence—the notion that if you come across a fence, it was probably put there for a reason—is particularly relevant here. Another aphorism that makes the point well comes from author Donald Kingsbury: “Tradition is a set of solutions for which we have forgotten the problems.”
Moshe’s key argument is that, without our needing to (or indeed being able to) understand them, traditions can help guide our behavior in positive ways—perhaps even leading to better outcomes than do actions guided solely by rationality. For this reason, traditions, social rules and cultural norms have value when determining our actions. Therefore, they deserve more consideration than they are currently afforded in our public discourse. These traditions need not be specifically religious, but those are the deepest, longest-standing and broadest sets of traditions. Additionally, they’re the most likely to come into conflict with modern proponents of rationality as our ultimate guide to action.
Bringing in some of the insights of Friedrich Hayek, Moshe argues that valuable information is encoded in these traditions and they should not be discarded lightly. Some of the traditions or norms may not make sense to us in the moment. But the fact that they have evolved over long periods of time and still retain active adherents reflects their durability and, in turn, their efficacy in maintaining resilient societies. In short, these traditions aggregate and transmit the knowledge gained from the experiences of generations in a way that affords practical knowledge to people who have neither the time nor capacity to obtain it themselves.
It’s certainly true that blind trust in unchanging traditions is also insufficient for meeting an ever-changing set of challenges; traditions need to be updated. Balancing that tension between tradition and change in a manner that enables the best or proper or correct action is the core of wisdom.
Continue reading at Discourse Magazine.
Ben Wilterdink is the former Director of Programs at the Archbridge Institute. Follow him @bgwilterdink.
Culture of Flourishing
With the formation of new institutions and an increasingly broad conversation about the need to renew American innovation, the topic of progress has been much discussed recently. Of course, everyone is for progress. Everyone wants to move forward, or to advance, or to move toward betterment. The trouble comes in defining what progress actually is. Occasionally this is easy, but more often—especially in the context of public policy with its multifaceted problems, imperfect knowledge and many tradeoffs—it is hard to define what progress means in practice.
An often-overlooked starting point in defining progress is what evidence to consider and what methods should be used to evaluate that evidence. For a long while now, reason and rationality, with their attendant prioritization of propositional knowledge (that is, the kind of knowledge related to the truth value of claims made with articulated statements), have become the ultimate method of analyzing problems and solutions. However, a growing number of thinkers are making the case for different forms of knowledge. To truly make progress on today’s problems, we must supplement propositional knowledge with the wisdom to be gained from long-standing traditions and social norms.
A recent EconTalk episode, in which Russ Roberts talks with Moshe Koppel about norms, tradition and resilient societies, illustrates this different form of knowledge. To grossly oversimplify, Russ and Moshe discuss the latter’s book, “Judaism Straight Up: Why Real Religion Endures,” and the role that religions and their related traditions play in guiding our norms and behaviors toward productive ends, even as we are often unaware of how they function. Chesterton’s fence—the notion that if you come across a fence, it was probably put there for a reason—is particularly relevant here. Another aphorism that makes the point well comes from author Donald Kingsbury: “Tradition is a set of solutions for which we have forgotten the problems.”
Moshe’s key argument is that, without our needing to (or indeed being able to) understand them, traditions can help guide our behavior in positive ways—perhaps even leading to better outcomes than do actions guided solely by rationality. For this reason, traditions, social rules and cultural norms have value when determining our actions. Therefore, they deserve more consideration than they are currently afforded in our public discourse. These traditions need not be specifically religious, but those are the deepest, longest-standing and broadest sets of traditions. Additionally, they’re the most likely to come into conflict with modern proponents of rationality as our ultimate guide to action.
Bringing in some of the insights of Friedrich Hayek, Moshe argues that valuable information is encoded in these traditions and they should not be discarded lightly. Some of the traditions or norms may not make sense to us in the moment. But the fact that they have evolved over long periods of time and still retain active adherents reflects their durability and, in turn, their efficacy in maintaining resilient societies. In short, these traditions aggregate and transmit the knowledge gained from the experiences of generations in a way that affords practical knowledge to people who have neither the time nor capacity to obtain it themselves.
It’s certainly true that blind trust in unchanging traditions is also insufficient for meeting an ever-changing set of challenges; traditions need to be updated. Balancing that tension between tradition and change in a manner that enables the best or proper or correct action is the core of wisdom.
Continue reading at Discourse Magazine.
Ben Wilterdink
Ben Wilterdink is the former Director of Programs at the Archbridge Institute. Follow him @bgwilterdink.
Share:
Related Posts
Why You Need a Friend From a Different Generation
Why You Should Buy the American Dream at the Point of Maximum Pessimism
What Do Trump, Harris Have to Say About the American Dream? Not Enough