Psychosocial diversity: a neglected complement of biodiversity

Inspiration, Conspiration, Transpiration, Expiration (Part #6)

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Recognizing the diverse; There is necessarily a degree of acknowledgement of social diversity, notably in the workplace (Guy Tchibozo (Ed.), Cultural and Social Diversity and the Transition from Education to Work, 2013). As noted by Troy Duster (Social Diversity in Humans: Implications and Hidden Consequences for Biological Research, Cold Spring Harbor Perspectives in Biology, 6, 2014, 5):

Humans are both similar and diverse in such a vast number of dimensions that for human geneticists and social scientists to decide which of these dimensions is a worthy focus of empirical investigation is a formidable challenge....For social scientists, the matter of what constitutes the relevant borders of a population is equally complex.... Although race and caste are categories deployed in both human genetics and social science, the social meaning of race and caste as pathways to employment, health, or education demonstrably overwhelms the analytic and explanatory power of genetic markers of difference between human aggregates.

Social diversity is usefully clarified by Dania Santana, namely as:

A successful community in which individuals of different race, ethnicity, religious beliefs, socioeconomic status, language, geographical origin, gender and/or sexual orientation bring their different knowledge, background, experience and interest for the benefit of their diverse community. As they all contribute to the success of the community, individuals in a healthy diverse society practice daily understanding and respect of the different ideas, viewpoints and unique perspectives of those who are somewhat different from them, as they recognize that those individuals share and are actively working towards achieving many common goals for the benefit of the community as a whole. With countries becoming more diverse, the ideas and understanding of social diversity are evolving and expanding due to the access we now have to interact through digital media with people all over the world. (What Is Diversity And How I Define It In The Social Context, Embracing Diversity)

Social diversity can be considered from a psychological perspective, as with the focus on intersubjectivity by John B. Rijsman (Social Diversity: a social psychological analysis and some implications for groups and organizations, European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology, 6, 1997, 2). Related recognition is accorded to cultural diversity and biocultural diversity.

Commonality? The degree of commonality is however disputed:

Many evolutionary psychologists have asserted that there is a panhuman nature, a species typical psychological structure that is invariant across human populations. Although many social scientists dispute the basic assumptions of evolutionary psychology, they seem widely to agree with this hypothesis. Psychological differences among human populations (demes, ethnic groups, races) are almost always attributed to cultural and sociological forces in the relevant literatures. However, there are strong reasons to suspect that the hypothesis of a panhuman nature is incorrect. (Bo Winegard, et al, Human Biological and Psychological Diversity, Evolutionary Psychological Science , 3, 2017):

Especially challenging with respect to any sense of "common humanity" is how the subtleties of commonality and unity are to be comprehended -- beyond simplistic affirmations in that regard, as argued separately (Comprehension of Unity as a Paradoxical Dynamic: metaphors reframing problematic engagement with otherness, 2019). The argument is especially relevant given the widespread appeals for unity and consensus -- over decades -- and their potential naivety in the highly divided world of the present times. It can even be argued that belief in the possibility of viable consensus is itself problematic (The Consensus Delusion: mysterious attractor undermining global civilization as currently imagined, 2011).

In contrast with the research investment in identifying the elements of biodiversity (most notably the range of species currently threatened with exitinction), it is questionable whether this can be similarly recognized with respect to the elements of psychosocial diversity and their dynamics, as exemplified by:

• religions: There are an estimated 10,000 distinct religions worldwide -- each clearly meriting recognition as a source of inspiration, despite efforts by dominant religions to suppress those in a minority, typically in support of political agendas. The religons with smaller numbers of adherents have long been framed as a challenge to the spiritual missions of the most dominant religions. These readily frame minority religions as a nexus of conspiracy.
  
  
• languages: The SIL International's Ethnologue: Languages of the World lists over 7,100 spoken and signed languages. Whilst these may well be a source of inspiration, it is appropriate to recall the religious and colonial policies which have contributed to the suppression of languagues (Lists of extinct languages; Lists of endangered languages; and List of revived languages). Any process of repression is typically associated with recognition that the threatened language could be seen as enabling conspiration among those inspired to speak it, rather than the official language (List of official languages).
  
  
• disciplines: As a mode of knowing, in contrast to the range of topics pursued, each mode is appropriately understood as a particular inspiration to its practitioners. The information sciences typically conflate a discipline with a range of topics making it difficult to estimate the number of distinctive modes of "disciplined" knowing. One exercise to this end, a section in an early edition of the Encyclopedia of World Problems and Human Potential (1976), recorded the existence of 1845, variously interrelated (Intellectual Disciplines and Sciences cross-referenced to world problems, 1976).
  
  
• values: Potentially to a far higher degree than religions, languages or disciplines, particular human values can be understood as a special source of inspiration. As with disciplines, and despite frequent reference to "values", it remains a challene to determine just how many such sources of inspiration frame the recognition of problems and the strategies by which they can be addressed. A systematic approach to this challenge features as Human values and wisdom, one of the databases of the online Encyclopedia of World Problems and Human Potential. That exercise specifically addressed the ambiguity between values deemed "constructive" (987) and those deemed "destructive" (1992), through clustering them in "value polarities" (230) (Human Values Project: Explanatory Comments).
  
  
• concepts and models: Arguably there is a case for recognizing how models constitute a source of inspiration with the expectation of the possibility of identifying comprehensive listings of them. If available, these tend to have a highly specialized focus. In contrast to "subjects", a case can be made for identification of "concepts" as a source of inspiration (Toward a Concept Inventory: suggestions for a computerised procedure, 1973; Encyclopedia of Conceptual Insights from the World's Cultures: proposal to UNESCO in relation to the Decade on Cultural Development, 1988)

If acknowledged, how are the dynamics between such constructs to be understood in any way as constituting a coherent psychosocial ecosystem -- by analogy with that of the natural environment? Do problems and strategies each become a focus for both inspiration and conspiration?

Recognizing the "abnormal"? Perhaps appropriately, explicit recognition of "psychosocial diversity" has highlighted the need to recognize those framed as not conforming to social norms, as in the Declaration of Lima of the Latin American Network of Psychosocial Diversity (2018)

We are a historically discriminated collective composed of users, ex-users and survivors of psychiatry, mad people, people with psychosocial disabilities, among other identities of psychosocial diversity. We live common experiences in which we face torture, deprivation of liberty, isolation, trauma, violence, stigmatization, exclusion and violation of our rights.

Such recognition merits extension to those considered problematically "radical" -- beyond the esteeem in which "extremists" and the radically innovative may be held, if only by history. This dimension can be variously explored:

• Radical Innovators Beware -- in the arts, sciences and philosophy: terrifying implications of radical new deradicalisation initiative in France (2017)
• Identifying the Root Cause Focus of Radical Identity: reframing the complex space of radicalisation dynamics (2015)
• Norms in the Global Struggle against Extremism: "rooting for" normalization vs. "rooting out" extremism? (2005).

Dynamics between the diverse? Missing is an extension of the systemic insights of the environmental sciences to encompass the problematic dynamics of the psychosocial system -- in appropriate collaboration with those with insights into their nature. The question as to why this situation prevails goes to the heart of any meaningful response to the challenges of "climate change" -- whether natural or psychosocial. The argument can be developed with respect to what is acclaimed as the major strategic preoccupation of governance:

• Psychology of Sustainability: embodying cyclic environmental processes (2002)
• Peter Schmuck and Wesley P. Schultz: The Psychology of Sustainability Development (2002)
• Susan M. Koger, Britain A. Scott: Psychology and Environmental Sustainability: a call for integration (Teaching of Psychology, 34, 2007, 1)
• Annamaria Di Fabio: The Psychology of Sustainability and Sustainable Development for Well-Being in Organizations, Frontiers in Psychology, 19 September 2017)

The approach to so-called ecological psychology is usually characterized by its stark opposition to representational and computational theories of perception, namely the (direct) perception of how the environment of an organism affords various actions to the organism. As argued by James J. Gibson, animals and humans stand in a 'systems' or 'ecological' relation to the environment, such that to adequately explain some behaviour it was necessary to study the environment or niche in which the behaviour took place and, especially, the information that 'epistemically connects' the organism to the environment (The Senses Considered as Perceptual Systems, 1966; A. Chemero, Radical Embodied Cognitive Science, 2009).

Perception is then held to require neither the manipulation of contents nor the formation of mental representations of the world. Instead, perception is said to consist of the detection of specifying information. Framed as radical embodied cognitive science, this is an explanatory framework that aims to account for different cognitive processes without positing representational states and computational processes.

Although valuable clarification of the academic debate in relation to radical enactivism is available (E. W. Myin and D. D. Hutto, REC: Just radical enough. Studies in Logic, Grammar and Rhetoric, 41, 2015, 54; .Segundo Ortin, et al, Ecological psychology is radical enough: a reply to radical enactivists, Philosophical Psychology, 32, 2019, 7). It is questionable whether this addresses the dramatic nature of the governance challenges of humanity and of individuals in engaging with an environment in extreme disarray. In particular, is the nature of the academic debate on this matter an instance of the failure to frame those differences of perspective highlighted in ecosystemic terms -- irrespective of the diumensions that the debate ignores?

It could be appropriately asked whether the much-cited quotation of physicist Niels Bohr is more relevant to the situation, as said to Wolfgang Pauli after his presentation of Heisenberg's and Pauli's nonlinear field theory of elementary particles (1958): Your theory is crazy, but it's not crazy enough to be true. Why is it too readilty assumed that the challenges of engaging cognitively and strategically with the environment are of a far lesser order than those faced by fundamental physics in engaging with elusive phenomena?

The challenge to any clarification of inspiracy in relation to conspiracy is well-framed by another quotation of Niels Bohr:  We are suspended in language in such a way that we cannot say what is up and what is down. The word "reality" is also a word, a word which we must learn to use correctly. (Quoted in Philosophy of Science, 37, 1934).

Role of metaphor in engaging with dynamics: A case can be made for a subtler approach to the pattern of inspiration and conspiration. This is one which neither environmentalists nor social scientists have as yet been prepared to consider, as argued separately (Biodiversity as a metaphor for psychosocial diversity? 2019).

As noted there, environmentalists have been remarkable in rendering comprehensible the riches of biodiversity and its current vulnerability. However, beyond their preoccupations, global civilization is faced with multiple tensions and vulnerabilities with respect to what might be termed psychosocial diversity. Like it or not, these may be held to be of greater relevance by many. How is it that loss of "biodiversity" has become a matter of legitimate concern (at least for the natural sciences), but that the increase or decrease of "psychodiversity" is ignored so systematically?

Beyond "radical", as understood academically and politically, there is therefore a case for exploring "theories" which may indeed need to be "crazy enough", as discussed separately (Cognitive Embodiment of Nature "Re-cognized" Systemically: radical engagement with an increasingly surreal reality, 2018). The latter developed the argument in the following sections:

As argued there, a key to an alternative approach is the use of metaphor, previously presented as a new frontier, with all the challenges that implies (Being the Universe: a metaphoric frontier, 1999). The case has been "reasonably" made by Douglas Hofstadter and Emmanuel Sander (Surfaces and Essences: analogy as the fuel and fire of thinking, 2013), and argued by Aldo Matteucci (Analogies (and metaphors) as mental maps, Diplo, 19 July 2012).

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