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Objective: Our objectives are the following: to establish the nature and show the consequences of the set of circular cause-effect interrelationships between culture and the social-political-institutional order; and to formulate a social well-being function to explain the dynamics that exist between culture and the social-political-institutional order. In formalizing the system of circular cause-effect interrelationships, we will using the following three epistemological premises to expound our ideas. Our social well-being function will then correspond with these respective cause-effect interrelationships. The first type of cause-effect interrelationship is based on the meaning of the science of culture as defined by Ibn Khaldun. We will show that this conception has a particular relevance in understanding the ethics underlying the social-political-institutional interrelationships but runs into methodological problems. The second type of cause-effect interrelationship derives from the Hegelian dialectical approach, recently used by Fukuyama in developing a science of culture in the framework of isothymia-disintegration of large systems into small ones. The dialectical process is also seen as a groundwork of political philosophy in which cultural plurality becomes an embedding epiphenomenon. This causal approach between the plurality of culture and the "isothymotic" states is referred to as "cultural pluralism."7 The third type of cause-effect interrelationship is what I will show as a social-political-institutional process of unification in cultural dynamics. I will formulate this thesis on the premise of divine unity from which ensues a universally complementary process of socioscientific becoming. Now the ontology of cultural pluralism is negated in favor of the ontology and epistemology of divine unity, and this assumes a definitive explanatory dynamic in the socioscientific domain. Consequently, the concept of cultural pluralism is replaced by a world convergence toward a unique and inescapable reality, that of unity and unification. This will be shown as the consequence of complementing diversity premised on the self-same epistemology of unity and unification.8 Here, too, the circular-cultural dynamic with the socioscientific order will be shown as essentially circular and reinforcing in continuum. This approach will be the focus of this paper. Definitions of Terms: The terms "culture" and "cultural pluralism" need to be understood in the context of our thesis. The thesis is to establish the arguments behind the circular cause-effect process of individual and socioscientific transformation and to establish a social well-being upon this. Culture: Here "culture" means a certain preference as ethic in individuals and groups based on a referential text that determines behavior. This determining premise is also the epistemology of the encompassing ethical order. The externalizing of the preferences to the level of social, political, and institutional activities causes socio-scientific transformation to occur. Among the many activities that arise, we will consider here some of the socioeconomic characteristics. In this we will take the example of the Mi'kmak people on Cape Breton Island. The Mi'kmak are a historic race of Canadian Indians. Cultural Pluralism: By "cultural pluralism" we mean the atomism of the epistemological base explaining the individual and group and hence the social relevance of cultural dynamics. The cultural atomism, when structural and abiding as a consequence of the epistemological premises, will be referred to as "methodological individualism." This is then as much a characteristic of individual as of collective (agency, group, institutional, political, etc.) preferences. Such a cultural atomism in the framework of methodological individualism is reinforced by the circular cause-effect between the nature of the individuated cultural epistemologies and their consequences on preference formation.
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