Human Flourishing from a Complex Adaptive System Perspective: Exploring the Wellbeing of Social Groups as Emergent Entities

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Lines 63-4: Presentation of how well-being is defined would be strengthened, greatly, by exact reference to the source of the excerpted narrative as well as by referencing other sources.  Wellbeing is defined generically as “the relative attainment of a personal state of quality.”  

As presented, the author/s are relying solely on a handful of cited thinkers in informing their understanding of the concepts of well-being and flourishing.  They would do well to expand the cited sources for definitions/conceptualization of these two concepts.

The narrative discussion of the SAGE and SFI conceptual models, in addition -- perhaps -- to other such models would be strengthened via a table that compares the common elements of the models as well as a figure that presents a visual understanding of these relationships/overlaps/commonalities.

The same comment with respect to the substantive discussion beginning at 736-8.  

As written, this review piece is dense and challenging to navigate/make sense of, though the authors do close out the fourth section of the paper with reference to and discussion of key aspects of well-being.  This section of the paper holds the most promise in terms of generating new conceptual -- if not empirical/theoretical -- understanding.

In addition, a specific addition of clear considerations for theory, practice and future research would add to the value of the paper.

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Overall, this was a difficult paper for me to assess. The paper uses a vast array of concepts, many of which are beyond my expertise, especially in the section on CAS in physical and biological entities. It also attempts to bring together a number of threads into a novel argument about group wellbeing. I struggled to follow these different threads and so, unfortunately, did not gain a new understanding of group wellbeing. I wondered how much of the argument was semantic. For example, there was a section on the way in which emotions are socially influenced and constructed. I agree with the authors’ argument here, but I couldn’t see how it suggests there is ‘such a thing’ as group wellbeing.  I commend the authors for their extensive research, and advise them to greatly trim and streamline their arguments to show how they are novel and advance the field. One or more diagrams could help both streamline the argument and communicate it to readers. Some more specific comments are below. Please note that I have not picked up on all the material I was unable to follow.

The abstract is clear.

It would be good to justify the focus on just two ‘complementary frameworks’ of flourishing (p. 2).

A diagram would be extremely helpful in making it clear how the two models complement each other.

The argument concerning ‘analogues for the domains of individual flourishing and the domains of community wellbeing’, ll. 226 – 233 seems underdeveloped to me. For example, what is ‘satisfying community’? What are ‘healthy structures and practices’? Why is ‘proficient leadership’ akin to the ‘character’ of a community?

I don’t understand the way in which properties ‘emerge’ in natural systems sufficiently to verify, or not, the arguments on pp. 6-7. Some of the phrasing, to me, almost implies ‘magic’ – which seems unlikely (but, again, I don’t know how CAS work in the physical world). There is a lot of reference to complex systems being unable to be reduced to their individual components, but this does not mean that many properties cannot be explained by the interaction between their individual components.

I would not call altruism a ‘group-level property’ – l. 332.

I don’t understand, so can’t assess, the argument about money ll. 342-3.

There is an overlap between the description of emergent behaviour and self-organisation that could be removed for clarity (p. 8).

I don’t know what it means to say ‘the heart does not act in its own interest but serves the organism’ l. 444. Surely the heart has no ‘interests’ at all – selfish or otherwise.

Again, I don’t understand the theoretical and empirical basis for this work well enough to confidently judge, but it reads to me like a CAS1 is simply a biological structure that has evolved into an ‘individual’ with parts that cannot be physically separated and continue to survive. CAS2 are groups of individuals. That is, I am not clear why this terminology is useful to forward the overall argument.

I am also very confused by the claim that in CAS2 systems, ‘intentional governance systems are needed’. l. 469. What about emergent properties as discussed earlier?

I don’t see how a group of individuals can ever be a CAS1 as is claimed l. 489. There will always be a degree of selfish, uncooperative behaviour. Again, perhaps I do not have the background to follow the argument.

I don’t understand the use of ‘free choice’ l. 568 – how often do people ‘choose’ the groups they belong to? Rarely. Therefore, the question of whether they would continue to ‘choose’ to belong is, to me, not all that useful (but maybe it just needs to be explained further).

Group wellbeing, as defined on p. 12 reads to me more like group resilience – i.e. the group’s capacity to keep going in more or less its current form.

I agree with the authors that the emotions experienced by individuals are heavily influenced by the group they are in and that groups create and favour particular emotional experiences. I am not clear on how this sits within the broader argument being made here.

The introduction of ‘moral character’ needs further justification as it is very contentious notion and can’t be simply defined as appears to be the case here, l. 857.

A lot of thinking has gone into this article – thank you for the opportunity to read and review it.

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

1. This article starts from the question that the author asks himself in the abstract: whether the qualities of well-being and flourishing can be applied in a meaningful way at the level of the social group, not only as an aggregation of the well-being or flourishing of its members, but on its own terms as an emergent entity. In short, it is a question of knowing whether a social group in formation (emerging) can gain in well-being and flourishing as such a group, and not only because its members gain. The author examines it from four perspectives and concludes that it does. In each of these perspectives, s/he handles abundant bibliography and a remarkably interdisciplinary vision.
2. It is surprising that the author does not handle the classic concepts perhaps closest to her/his question: that of "good life" and that of "common good". This silence should be broken; these concepts have a very extensive bibliography and have more than two millennia of existence. Its definition, moreover, has been of much more concern than the definition of well-being and flourishing. I consider the importance of the omission of both concepts so clear that it seems essential to me to address this deficiency from the beginning. At the very least, the author would have to explain why s/he omits them.
3. The problem is that, if s/he does this, the purpose of the article could not be what it is. To ask what the common good is for two millennia is to affirm that the common good, that is, the good of a community, is possible. To put it in relation to the good life implies relating it to the individual. Both things make it useless to ask whether it is possible for the individual "good life" to be of benefit to the community itself. Among the definitions of "common good", one of the most accepted is that it is the maximum possible good so that it simultaneously affects the entire community and each of its members.
4. This does not mean that I consider this study useless. The author makes many interesting observations in relation to well-being and flourishing, and many of them would help to update the age-old problem of the common good and the good life. But s/he would have to redo the whole article so that the purpose is what I have just indicated. For example, in the case of the author's second perspective, the idea of the Complex Adaptive System (CAS) is totally pertinent to what I propose. Among others, her/his use of VanderWeele's studies would notably illuminate the concepts of common good and good life, in addition to those related to well-being and flourishing. Of clear interest are his references to six domains, with two items in each domain, to form a 12-item Sure Flourishing Index (SFI). So is the "SAGE perspective" developed by Dennis Snower and his colleagues and their study of the four interrelated domains of Solidarity, Agency, Profit, and Environmental Connection.
5. Here are some ideas that might be helpful to the author:
   91. Although it is ancient, Maritain's study of the different meanings that St. Thomas Aquinas gave to the concept of "common good" is still a very useful reference. On it and the controversy it provoked, R. McInerny, "The Primacy of the Common Good", in:Art and Prudence: Studies in the Thought of Jacques Maritain, University of Notre Dame Press, Notre Dame 1988, 77-91. Reading it would allow the author to enter this problem at the beginning (the classical definitions) and rethink the conclusions of her/his readings and reflections based on it. There is much more, of course. It would allow her/him to see the breadth of the problem, for example, Senent and De Frutos' (2022) study on the common good of humanity in the work of Francisco Suarez. Likewise, the distinction and relationship between the common good and the good life would help her/him to frame in a universal perspective everything that the author has studied. For the concept of "good life" the work of Rabbás et al. 2015 could be useful.
   92. In relation to solidarity, I miss its dialogical character in relation to subsidiarity, which the author does not deal with. It is central to the topic of the article. On this point, there are notes of clear interest in the work coordinated by Rubio de Urquía and Pérez-Soba (2004). This dialogical nature of the relationship between solidarity and subsidiarity reverts directly to everything related to the need to reconcile freedom and distributive justice. Much – almost everything – that the author says in the article is pertinent in relation to this problem.
   93. In my opinion, in the second perspective, that of complex systems, the author takes too long to develop what is related to the physical and natural sciences. In the end, s/he her/himself underlines the capital difference that referring to human beings entails.
6. In any case, it makes no sense to detail what constitutes the rest of the article without first reworking it from what I have mentioned. The article could be reoriented to show that interdisciplinarity and everything else that the author exposes today implies a much greater development than can be said about the common good and the good life and, also, about well-being and flourishing.

 

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 4 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Thank you for your manuscript which I read with keen interest. I offer the following comments which I hope are helpful:

Lines 17 and 18 (as well as lines 44 and 45): Not sure you need slashes here.

Introduction section: As a reader I would welcome some narrative on why you think this is an important topic and what the implications of your arguments might be (and for whom).

 

Lines 35 and 37: Repeated use of animate/animated - reads a little repetitiously.

 

Line 86: Need page number in citation as you are quoting.

 

Lines 136 and 137 (and 149) '... enabled early human group ...' and 'The human capacity ...'- strong claims given that we don't know for sure. 

Line 203: 'This firstly does includes ...' could be better phrased.

Line 210 - 224: Lots of what read like opinions with no literature support.

Line 226: Not sure I understand, '... between and analogues ...'

Line 272: Too many spaces before "holism"

Line 360: Colon needed after 'exhibit'.

Line 388 - 391: I wonder if AI could be mentioned as an example here.

Line 470 and Line 483: Some repetition of rules and monitoring.

Lines 648 and 660: Too many spaces before 'community' and 'Individual'

Line 751: Need page number in citation as you are quoting.

Line 781: Needs a citation after 'mistrust'.

Line 784: Need page number in citation as you are quoting.

Line 791: Do you need the 'and' and is 'seem' meant to say 'seen'?

Line 811 and 819: Need page number in citation as you are quoting.

Line 869-870: This could benefit from some interpretation for the reader.

Line 979: Should 'the' be 'they'?

Line 983: Might be worth defining telos for the lay reader.

Conclusion section: similar to earlier comments about importance and implications.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

I do not see improvement in this second version of the manuscript sufficient to override my prior concerns or to address my prior comments.  Some of the additional references cited (e.g., 

Author Response

With respect, we are disappointed to hear that the significant changes we made in response to the reviewer's initial comments were not appreciated. Having considerably revised the text in response, if the reviewer does "not see improvement ... sufficient to override my prior concerns or to address my prior comments", then we do not think any further revisions would be helpful, as the reviewer perhaps has expectations that this paper will fundamentally not be able to address.

For example, the previous review stated that: "Lines 63-4: Presentation of how well-being is defined would be strengthened, greatly, by exact reference to the source of the excerpted narrative as well as by referencing other sources.  Wellbeing is defined generically as “the relative attainment of a personal state of quality. As presented, the author/s are relying solely on a handful of cited thinkers in informing their understanding of the concepts of well-being and flourishing.  They would do well to expand the cited sources for definitions/conceptualization of these two concepts. The narrative discussion of the SAGE and SFI conceptual models, in addition -- perhaps -- to other such models would be strengthened via a table that compares the common elements of the models as well as a figure that presents a visual understanding of these relationships/overlaps/commonalities. The same comment with respect to the substantive discussion beginning at 736-8. "

In response, we revised our approach considerably. We now no longer just focus on these two models, but incorporate a range of frameworks of wellbeing and flourishing (W/F). These are introduced across three new subsections in the first part of the paper, one on wellbeing (pp. 3-4), one on flourishing (pp. 4-6), and one on scholarship applying W/F at the group level (pp. 6-9). We do still place quite a strong emphasis on the SAGE and SFI models, but the revision is much less anchored to these and instead seeks to situate itself within a far broader literature on W/F. 

The reviewer also wrote, "As written, this review piece is dense and challenging to navigate/make sense of, though the authors do close out the fourth section of the paper with reference to and discussion of key aspects of well-being.  This section of the paper holds the most promise in terms of generating new conceptual -- if not empirical/theoretical -- understanding."

In response, we significantly streamlined the paper, reducing it by 4245 words (from 16504 to 12259), and from four to three main sections. We have also provided better signposting throughout to help orient the reader.

The reviewer also wrote, "In addition, a specific addition of clear considerations for theory, practice and future research would add to the value of the paper."

In response, we sought to make such considerations more prominent in the paper, interweaving these throughout all sections.

We're sorry to hear these changes do not constitute a sufficient improvement, but if that is the case we do not believe any further work on this paper would satisfy this reviewer. For example, having reduced the paper's length by over a quarter, and provided a much better structure and signposting throughout, if the reviewer still believes that the paper is dense and challenging to navigate, then we do not think any further revisions would be satisfactory.

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

I keep the numbering of my previous review and comment on the author's answers added to it.

1. The authors thank me for my positive comments. It is obvious that I have nothing to add. I stand by what I said.
2. The authors say that they have included a paragraph on the common good (on pp. 20-21). But the revised text ("socsci-4163652-peer-review-v1-2.pdf") concludes on page 18 and, in those 18 pages, the common good is not mentioned even once. There must be a mistake.
3. They do not believe that including the idea of the common good means that we cannot explore the idea of wellbeing/flourishing (W/F) at a group level, which is the central point of their paper. They view the concept of group W/F as overlapping or intersecting with that of the common good: they argue that the common good includes but is not limited to notions of group W/F, while in turn group W/F includes but is not limited to notions of the common good. Obviously, the authors must make this statement concrete: what does the concept of common good that is not W/F contain and, above all, what includes the concept of W/F that does not contain that of common good. To make it easier, I'm trying to improve the definition of common good that I included in my review: it is the maximum possible good that is simultaneously the maximum possible for the entire community and for each of its members. Wallace (1999) recalls that Aquinas understood common good as the set of social conditions necessary for fostering the proper good of every person and the overall flourishing of the society. In this definition W/F underlies almost explicitly.
4. Obviously I do not intend that the authors write an article for my interest in the common good. I modestly try to help them improve their study. If they satisfactorily clarify what I am asking for in the last lines of this second review, they will be able to better explain the importance of their findings.
5. Regarding my statement about solidarity, I miss certainly its dialogical character in relation to subsidiarity, which the authors do not deal with, and I insist that it is central to the topic of their article. It implies personal freedom in relation to the W/F of the community itself.
6. It is already answered in paragraph 4.
7. I must not modify my first review.

Author Response

We apologize for the confusion with the previous revision. When we stated that we had included a paragraph on the common good on pp. 20-21, this pagination referred to the word document we submitted. It appears that this was reformatted by the journal, and on inspection of the reformatted paper it appears this paragraph was in fact on p.11. We cannot state for certain which page this will appear on in the new revision (since we have added two paragraphs near the start of the paper), but would point out that it is the second paragraph of the section titled "Qualities of Flourishing Groups," and suggest that the reviewer check around p.12 or 13. In addition though, in the new revision we have added two additional paragraphs on the topic of the common good to the section titled "Applying W/F to the Group," with these being the fourth and fifth paragraphs of the section. There we have sought to explain how we view the intersection of the common good with group W/F and complex adaptive systems.

For example, in the fifth paragraph, we write, "Clearly, the notion of group W/F can be interpreted as aligning with work on the common good. But it does perhaps offer a relatively novel perspective on this established idea, especially in conjunction with, or viewed through the prism of, the notion of complex adaptive systems. It may help to envisage three extensive bodies of scholarship, existing in a Venn diagram: (1) the common good: (2) wellbeing and flourishing; and (3) complex adaptive systems. These bodies of work do have some overlap, with a meaningful area of intersection in the Venn diagram, which is what we are focused on here. However, although one can sometimes find works that intersect two of these bodies of literature, we would argue it is rare to find one situated at the juncture of all three. In that regard, our hope and intention is that the paper can bring some new insights to each of these three established bodies of work through the relatively unusual juxtaposition we present here."

As to the point about the dialogical character of solidarity in relation to subsidiarity, we appreciate that the reviewer feels this is important. However, we disagree that it is particularly central to the topic of the article, and given that in our view the paper is lengthy enough, we prefer not to elaborate further on the topic of solidarity.

Round 3

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

I am grateful to the authors for the effort they have made to accept my suggestions. The references to the "common good" that they have introduced show a certain hesitation in the use of the concept; an imprecision that many experts share. The sequence they propose as (i) common good, (ii) W/F, (iii) CAS could give rise to a new development of these concepts and, above all, of their character as ethical praxis.

Thank you.