Kevin Simler

@hamandcheese @sarahdoingthing ... and from the outside, it's economics all the way down. even stories have to benefit tellers and listeners

@KevinSimler @sarahdoingthing Believe me, I'm sympathetic: https://goo.gl/nQHHc5  Yet means->ends frameworks speak not to "ends" themselves

@KevinSimler @sarahdoingthing Ritual may have a functional dimension but this belies a potentially equally valid transcendental dimension

@KevinSimler @sarahdoingthing I'm using transcendental in the Kantian sense, a kind of idealism economics glosses over, not supernaturalism

@hamandcheese @sarahdoingthing I think I get it, but an example would do wonders.

@hamandcheese @sarahdoingthing you mean that people *experience* rituals as transcendental instead of economic? (if so, totally...)

@hamandcheese (er, I'm a bit fuzzy on "transcendental")

@KevinSimler Say I argue that communion is a ritual people do to symbolically signal in-group commitment. Yet if asked that's not the case.