'Social Fact'

This is another political one. If this doesn't interest you, then sit down, shut up, watch tv, go to work, get a house, get married, have kids and and retire. Do not claim that your views are valid and justified; your lack of interest denies you your right to participation. Whew. That was kinda vindictive, no? Better watch that :^/

So, social fact. I hear the phrase 'social fact' being used to justify a lot. But no-one seems entirely sure what exactly it means. People throw it around like it is indisputable, but turns out it 'aint. And its been part of why we have lost our morality.

'Social fact' is a concept used in sociology. It is meant do describe a factual situation that describes an aspect of society. The suicide rate is a social fact; as is the social fact that dentists top themselves more than any other profession. Sad stuff.

This is a useful concept. Sadly, it has come to represent 'rules' rather than 'facts'. This is a very bad thing. Hume noted that it is impossible to get a 'should' statement from an 'is' statement without a conception of what is 'good' (i.e. morals). See my post on moral reasoning for advice on not falling into this intellectual trap.

Ways which social fact have come to be misapplied as justification for faulty reasoning typically take the form of someone asserting a supposedly indisputable course of action or inference from a situation, masking it in reason. The argument they are making is reasonable. But its not necessarily a good one. Here is an example prized from my FB wall:

I don't think you can abstract pure morality from more complicated, everyday situations-- this is actually the problem with the entire western philosophical tradition, that is approaches the real from the perspective of 'armchair' and therefore ossifies a much more fluid and complex social totality

Here, the person making the argument relies on 2 social facts:

1. Morality is abstract
2. Society is complex

The speaker then infers that the entire western philosophical tradition is somehow invalid, from these two social facts. This is a spurious use of reason. If you really want to invalidate western philosophy, you have to demonstrate how it is impractical/irrelevant rather than just assert it as social fact.

Another debate with another speaker:

an argument based on social fact would recognise that people do drugs (whether this is environmental or inherent is only relevant much later), and that we should accept this in the pursuit of any policy.

This is not a bad use of 'social fact'. The only problem I have with it is that while it is (currently) true in Australian societies, it isn't necessarily a universal or constant truth. The aborigines of this land got fucked up on love of country; societies that have strong community and spirituality consume far less quantities and types of drugs than in ones that do not. But if we accept this 'social fact' as gospel, we will be framing policy (and the very debate) on a premise that may change, or be indicative of some underlying issue. The 'social fact' becomes a 'social inevitability', as we get stuck in the mitigating or promoting the 'fact' whilst ignoring the underlying causes.

The point the speaker was trying to make was that some social fact is 'environemental' (i.e. constructed and changing) while some is 'inherent' (i.e. a fundamental part of human nature). I can agree that social fact can describe fundamental features of humanity, but with a large caveat. Most social fact is constructed; and social fact that claims to be 'inherent' is really a theory of human nature (which we can never fully 'know') masquerading as fact. Any time that social fact attempts to explain rather than describe, we should be instantly suspicious of it.

The point I am trying to make here is that 'social fact' cannot and will never be able to tell us exactly what to do or how to do it. It can give us an indicator of a problem or a solution, but it is only through our own judgement of the best course of action that we can achieve real results.

Social fact has come with a lot of hidden baggage; often when people use it they are asserting that a certain social situation (such as suicide) is inevitable; the stats say so. Its a fact. What these arguments fail to recognise is that society (and the social facts within it) are constructed by the actors within it. Therefore, dentists aren't necessarily doomed to suicide; if we combat the social fact by reaching out to them, giving them free use of laughing gas for personal pleasure and send them Christmas cards, I daresay lawyers will overtake them in the suicide stakes.

Social facts CAN be relevant to morality, as well. The agreed upon moral order within a society is also a social fact. The Spartans practiced infanticide, the Romans fucked their mothers and we in Australia believe that the right to uninterrupted public transport is more important than the right to protest.

The social fact of a society's morality is a very important piece in the puzzle as to why there are so many international conflicts throughout the world. The many Arab and South American 'problem states' cling to the moral of Autonomy, whereas Western states assert that Democracy (Human Dignity) is more important. We have recently seen a big reassessment of societal morality with the Arab Spring. The social fact in these states is now radically different from before; but only they can decide where to go next.

What is REALLY exciting is that the world is now approaching a level of interconnectedness (social fact)  where it may be possible to decide on a shared global morality. This implications for this are essentially world peace, an eradication of scarcity and a commitment to realising human potential. Stay switched on and alert for signs of increasingly productive dialogue between world leaders. Peace.