War as a consequence - By Tomas Moon

War as a consequence

From the moment bacteria formed and life began survival has been a struggle; predator bacteria, hostile environments and other dangers haunted the trails of bacteria and continued to do so. Those that survived and replicated effectively grew to become more complex and eventually creatures scuttled out of the sea.  This is natural selection and is the biological scalpel that sculpts our body, biological/chemical interactions and psychology.

The purpose of the story above is a reminder of the hostile environment each being faces, for there are two basic drives in evolution; to survive and to reproduce. These are the winds of the will to be, they push you along in your vessel of a body.  But all beings to some degree are pushed along by the same will and collisions erupt and boats are damaged, storms brew and waves fall as the balance of opposites find equilibrium, all of which can threaten your own evolution of staying afloat and raising a little fleet of your own.

It is in this chaos that we evolved our psychological mechanisms, to aid us in maximising our basic drive of survival and reproduction.  Mechanisms such as friendships and group living, for example drastically improve your personal survival by improving hunting success rates, defence against animals and from the elements.  These benefits were successful enough to cause an ‘other’ to be a friend and form the friendship mechanism, a psychological mechanism that bonds you to another, by doing so goes further extends than inclusive fitness theory, whereby we see our self within a genetic relative thus allowing  gene eye thinking (the closer the relative the stronger the altruism), justifying the sharing of resources and aid in raising their offspring  and relations - a somewhat selfish account of altruism.  By developing  a stronger sense of this we remove the degree of threat another person may pose, without this friendship function of our psyche all others would be threats and we would miss out on the benefits of group living.

But the door swings both ways, and other males for example can pose a threat to you or another within your group as hierarchies develop, often minimising the reproduction of a weaker or older male. Sexual jealousy for example is a mechanism to stop other males from taking your spouse and also to stop your spouse from looking for another male, and vice versa.  So an economy forms between the benefits and losses of group living. Who is worth investing in and not, who is a threat to that investment and who is an ally.  From this give and take relationship that can be coined reciprocal altruism, fighting occurs, while there is no single hypothesis that explains aggression many evolutionary problems that need to be overcome (that is what these mechanisms do is to overcome survival and reproduction problems) issues like; rapine of ones own resources, intra sexual rivalry, defence against attack and rising up the social power structure.  Aggression has many evolutionary benefits but some heavy costs if you fail.    

This economy above is of a personal scale, same to with inclusive fitness and gene eye thinking with the currency of survival and reproduction, and clearly this economy is not in recession just yet, as we all living in communities.  In social groups, group identity forms, a commonality in language, behaviours and dress that gives one face to a whole group, on many scales from a village identity to a national one, to an international and global one.  It is why we sing the same song to the national flag and why we call ourselves English or Dutch or where ever you call home.

This can be understood as type/token relations, every citizen is a type of the token country; If A is a type from token B then A is AB, if Alan is from England then Alan is English.  Whilst A is wholly A, A is only a part of B but B is a composite of all A’s and supervenes from them.  It would be mechanisms like friendship that allows B to form in the first place and as such societies are emergent from the relations of psychology, like muscle tissue from cell arrangements. 

It is interesting to wonder about identity, for in the first sense, many individuals with many different identities form one common face, which in turn plays a part in the identity of the individuals.  So whilst B is utterly dependent on the composite of many, to what extent does the face of the tribe define the individual (which will lead in to social contract theory for another day; but in brief)? For Hobbes it is the king that is the individual and all subjects are the extensions of him, thus the issue of identity here is solved in one sense, simply by removing the individuals from the equation. For Rousseau, the theory takes on a sort of Family relationship with the government, whereby we create a father figure that we obey, thus our government becomes almost the super ego (sense of morality) protecting us from the id of our strong desires of survival and reproduction making us as children and removing fully fledged adult independence. Locke says what we form is more of a value system that is based in property and prevailing beliefs like stealing is unlawful, these agreements form the nations laws and thus by allowing individuals to own property that they had a hand in attaining and by acceptances of the laws, we can at once rise above the dangers of nature and minimise the dangers of group living so make more economical sense, giving us individuality and protection at the cost creating a capitalistic self maximising culture based on financial Darwinism.

Suffice to say there is an element of homogeneous identity within a tribe membership that taps into psychological mechanisms of friendship by activating inclusive fitness perception in non-genetic relatives, we see a bit of us in others and so we can justify helping and working together, for we then help ourselves.  This is how groups can occur and social economics functions, extended inclusive fitness for maximising survival and reproduction purposes.  

If within a tribe, fighting can occur over resources or power struggles between individuals, then if two individual tribe meet, why would the tribes behave differently than if they are on the personal scale.  For if A is B and B meets C (another tribe) it is exactly the same as if two individuals from different tribes met, it could turn into an alliance or an enemy.

War is nothing but an extension of psychology, where a group united into one meets another group united into one and over resources, beliefs or power they fight for control.  The other tribe has not this localized homogeneous identity that the first tribe has, and so inclusive fitness is not extended and so, pushed by our desire, our will to be, force our improved survival at the cost of another.

  War is a natural extension of our psychology, neither good nor bad, just an enhancement of what we have evolved to survive.  The issues of war itself is not a philosophical one in itself, war has no normative value or ostensive externality in which we can declare that it is wrong or right, for it is a state of nature, be it personal, social or national, fighting occurs in all beings to some degree.

But evolutionary psychology does fail to account for a few things such as where does this drive to survive come from? The will to survive and reproduce are considered as elemental  to evolutionary psychologists as Gaia and Uranus was to the greeks, just as given (we have to want to live in order to develop ways in which you maximise your ability to survive).  This will lead to interesting philosophy and flirts with the Conatus of 17^th century  philosophers like Spinoza or Hobbes, the innate striving that takes manifest as the will to live and reproduce.

In summary, War is not immoral, in fact to a degree it can even be seen as an ethics, though not a pleasant one, as war is a way of approaching life which can be viewed in nature (ants fighting ants for example) and some have advocated this strongly like Genghis Khan. Yet this ethic is not a humanism and so will ultimately become the weaker choice: through strength learn gentleness, through gentleness strength will prevail!  But as yet War is a consequence of a composite of psychologies one to one, whilst we easily forget the homogeneous identity when we see dead individual soldiers and see war as a lots of individuals fighting, it is actually one person from many fighting another from their many, and is just a larger expression of us in the hostile forces of nature. 

  This is not to mean that war is necessary or inevitability, war is just a natural extension of ourselves at our current social evolutionary level, but new understanding of philosophy, psychology and science will show an abundance of resources and technologies that render conflict unnecessary, well that's the dream. 

By Tomas Moon

The Philosophy Takeaway 'War' Issue 28

The Feminist Reaction To Evolutionary psychology

Evolutionary psychology is a theory that states psychological mechanisms evolve casually as a survival skill to over come the 'hostile forces of nature'.  The theory can make predictions based on what would be advantageous to survival, thus describing the teleology of human nature, with physical and psychological mechanisms that help to achieve this goal for the longest time possible.  Evolutionary psychology gives a description of human nature, with strong results. For example fear and snakes.  By developing the psychological state of fear, we greatly enhance our survival chances; we feel fear when we believe our life is under threat and this causes us to develop reactions and intentionality that guide us to avoid these situations or at least focus in order to avoid fatalities.  Once we developed fear and experienced poisonous snakes, we inductively learnt to react with fear in the presence of snakes, thus we have a natural fear of snakes even though this danger is far more reduced today, with anti-venoms and such, it is still a part of our nature to fear snakes.

Psychological mechanisms develop by maximising what will optimise our survival, which will be definitive of our future natural dispositions, but something has changed in our environment which has caused defiance to certain developed psychological mechanisms.  This defiance took manifest in feminism (for example).

One psychological mechanism which both male and females have developed is attraction. In the largest survey of its day, looking into the habits of what males and females find attractive in the other sex, (buss, D.M. (1994a). the strategies of human mating, American scientist, 82, 238-249), this survey was done over six continents, over 10,000 subjects, from Nigeria to Japan and showed that women rank financial resources 150% more important then males in finding a long term partner attractive.  This would make sense as a male who can provide an abundance of food for this female and possible child will increase their survival prospects.  Women who attracted good hunters would have been more successful in surviving and breeding then women who didn't and thus the psychological state of attraction is mechanically joined with a successful male. In short resource access causes attraction in women.

But given our now advanced science and agriculture, do women still rely on males to provide in the same way? For example the sex disqualification act of 1919 allowed women to work and divorce  men and as we have grown, women now have a strong presence in the work place and gain highly powerful and respected jobs.  It seems analogous to the fear of snakes, a evolutionary lag in attraction is still present but is changing.

The natural environment hasn't changed but the social environment has and not necessarily in a evolutionary beneficial form, the idea of a women earning more then the male, at least 50 years ago and before, may have been off-putting to other possible mates as they would be emasculated, yet the feminist force has continued pushing against evolutionary mechanisms. 

Feminism can be seen as a reaction to evolutionary psychological mechanisms in the sense that the dependence on the males is caused by out-dated social structures, and in this sense feminism is progressive, but a more profound transition has occurred in this defiance to psychology.  Evolutionary influences give rise to automaton women or, as Simone de Beauvoir would have said, psychological mechanisms are responsible for women's state of immanence, and so there is an existential shift, affirming being and not automaton instinct, allowing choice instead of doing what is required to survive and as women becomes more successful it seems reasonable that attraction to wealth, will be displaced to other factors, perhaps creating a turn towards intelligence, wit and honesty.

But in summary, our sociability is moving to point that is causing a choice based on being and not reflex survival mechanisms, re-defining psychological states that will affect change in human nature.  It is interesting that the more independent we are of mother nature, the more independent humans are, becoming existentially authentic in choice, allowing decisions to be made by self reflection and not mere mechanisms. It shows we are moving away from what Darwinian evolution distilled in our physiological and psychological make up and entering a phase which is unknown to us.

T.C.R.Moon

The Philosophy Takeaway 'Gender' Issue 26 

Can we own something or only nothing? - By Tom Moon

Can we own something or only nothing?

It strikes me as immediately obvious that one can possess objects in the world, by possess I mean control and use in a manner that is befitting to the owners, for surely it is a social custom and economic standpoint that by 'mixing our labour' with nature we impart a ownership as payment for an improvement upon nature. This is a Locke-ian theory from his 'Two treatise of Goverment', which argues that we inherit our body as one's own and by using said body when hunting by killing a the rabbit you gain ownership of the meat because you expended energy and labour in order to acquire the meat. This represents an extension of what is intrinsically yours (the body) and so long as the food is not wasted and that one is not consumed by greed, it becomes a fair stake and the notion of property feels justified.

But the same is said for those who farm the land; they reap what they sow and what is sown belongs to the reaper. In short property is what is produced from ones own labour, any excess can be traded accordingly and so an economy forms. What followed from this is a currency that in turn buys labour; be it food, salt or gold. This makes the employers in essence the owner of the time and effort of the person labouring.

The whole notion of this civil structure is a drive at stepping out of a state of war with another, (described much like Hobbes as brutish and cruel) and enter into the social contract of civility, allowing safer and stronger guarantees that can be enforced by public law. For instance, if someone steals your money he breaks the contract he has signed. By living in that country and previously agreeing to its laws, an agent of the contract (police say) can enforce the agreed punishment on the thief and thus, not only is a financial economy balanced, but a social economy is also balanced, a loss restored and a wrong righted.

Now in principle this all sounds fine, it seems equality in liberty for all, a fair exchange and a chance to earn ones keep.. It provides incentive to be productive for the society in which they live. If someone kills your rabbit, there are plenty of rabbits left in the field to eat, and all the above falls neatly on paper.  But the titanic looked very neat on paper, this did not mean that the ship in practice did not sink, its teleology was inadequate, its goal unattainable, its design flawed, such is the case of the concept of ownership.

Tyranny dressed as liberty inherently follows from this aspect of the economical social contract and shows its spots when currency buys labour. This attempt at putting a price tag on effort (which is utterly immaterial and unfounded) is not within the realm of fair trade. One hours work could be worth 10 pence or 10 million pounds; any scale can be applied. Also a bias of wealth inherently creates slaves, in which the master increase his wealth but provides no labour, while the work force labours but gains no further wealth; for what is paid by the master is never over what is profitable for himself, and usually the profit margin is horrifically high.

Two workers in a field with the same tasks, one strong and one weak, the stronger man expends less effort for lifting, ploughing and sowing seeds, the weaker man expends more effort for the same tasks, but is paid the same.  The phenomenological experience of the two cannot be measured or scaled for it is a private affair that is ultimately outside an economy due to the internal nature of struggle. It may well be the case that the strong toils more and the weaker man glides with ease in his chores, the point is we cannot know.  But this scepticism is brushed over for it reveals the syndical element in buying labour, it places value in what is priceless.

But what is most sinister is that, if money buys labour then the money provider owns that person for the hours assigned, in essence creating a possession of a persons body, which inherently belongs to the labourer.  Paid labour is the prostitution of being and we sell ourselves very cheap when the question of 'how can we eat?' hooves in view.  What liberty can there be when a economy forces the majority, even an individual to sell his time and energy to improve the wealth of another?  Freedom for the few and labour for many...at lest in full on slavery theirs an honesty about the state of affairs.

This slavery creates a vast wealth for those who own, and this is not a analytic conclusion but a fact of the world, when we see that the 1% owns 40% of the world assets as of 2000 (the World Distribution of Household Wealth. James B. Davies, Susanna Sandstrom, Anthony Shorrocks, and Edward N. Wolff. 5 December 2006).  Thus it stands that a contradiction occurs as the notion employment becomes clear, if property comes about that we mix our labour with the project, then the rewards are yours but when we pay another for labour and still claim the rewards your, there is no mixing of labour and thus the rewards are not yours, its only economics that makes the rewards the employer not employee.

If wealth and currency naturally follow from non symmetric distribution of property then we cannot own something, we can own nothing, otherwise we create unethical and elitist hierarchies, benefiting the few and enslaving the poor, alas such is he way of things today.     

By Tom Moon

The Philosophy Takeaway 'Something/Nothing' Issue 24

Is madness more then a value judgement - By Tomas Moon

Is madness more then a value judgement

I've always pondered if the mad are actually so, or if they are just odd. The source of this stems from the huge variation between cultures as to what shows a mental difference or divergence to the normal.  In some places like Spain, throwing knives at an angry and wild bull is a national past time whereas Tibetan monks believe in pure pacifism to the point of avoiding small insects as they walk.  Cultural differentiation seems to be wide and undefined and so different behaviours have different reactions; put a Tibetan monk in a Spanish bull stadium and the end result will not be met with cheers from the crowd, but a tragic awe.

So firstly, given the cultural subjectivity of judgement (the agreement of what is normal behaviour) is there any objective grounds for madness, in which I mean, is there a universal constant behaviour that indicates madness in all cultures or perhaps a neurological in function that invariably causes mad like behaviours.  If there is, then madness is not a value judgement but an innate awareness of abnormal behaviour found in all humans, which we all recognise – for instance, if the sun started to dance in the sky, everyone would see abnormal behaviour because there is something inherently wrong in that behaviour for the sun.

In respect to the first, if we look at all human cultures over time, it becomes clear that no one type of behaviour is universally found as a sign of madness. We find human sacrifice all the way to extreme altruism, from warlords and infanticide to spirituality and the preservation of life. Every type of behaviour has been found to become a norm of at least one culture, so while at one point rape and pillage was seen as perfectly normal and seen only a species of passive madness in those who allow it to happen, those who were raped and pillaged see it as violent insanity alien to their cultural understanding, so in this case it seems that one particular 'mad' behaviour has no universality in normality, at some point all manner of madnesses have been accepted.

In respect to the latter, that is a scientific approach we find in writers like Thomas Szasz. The underlying theme is that for psychiatry to be a science, it must be based in a materialism, thus gaining objectivity, otherwise its becomes a mysticism.  To be sure, there have been cases that show similar brain behaviour in people who have been determined mad or mentally unstable, which is a promising result for answering the question presented.  But does that brain behaviour amount to actual behaviours or does it fail to account for the intentionality of the subject? There is a difference between holding that belief of pushing the sun with your mind and actually standing and actively trying to do it. The intentionality must be followed with a behaviour in order for it to be known that something is off, but you cannot deem one who may have brain behaviours similar to a clinically insane person, to actually be so, if they do not behave absurdly.  To make madness a scientific qualification cannot sufficiently account for the subjective realm, even if brain states are mind states, we do not act on every single thought generated by odd brain make up and chemical unbalance.

It seems, at least for this short series of thoughts that madness is a value judgement based on the cultural norms of a given society. As such, we should be weary about placing this label, for there is a difference between divergence and dangerous and against the right orator, anyone can be made to seem mad with a simple reductio ad absurdum (an argument structure that tries to guarantee the conclusion by making all other options absurd) creating necessity about a statement or invalidating it, a sense of 'it cannot be any other way'.  Used at lot in mathematics in the case of proving your sanity, an example is the twilight zone classic tale of the gremlin on the plane, if you haven't seen this:

Imagine you are on a plane and you look out the window and there is really, actually a little monster ripping up the wing. You scream to the hostess 'I saw a monster on the plane wing, and its tearing the wing apart, I gotta stop it!'. The hostess pauses and calmly asks; 'Which is more likely sir, a little undiscovered monster, clawing on the outside of a plane as it is flying at hundreds of miles an hour in the sky, with no clear visible damage to the wing, or, could you just be hallucinating because you are afraid of flying?' 

  It makes more sense to see you as mad, when really you could be the sanest on the plane.  If you experience something unique and possibly bizarre, and tell someone, even act on it (like in the example the man on the plane, he actually tries to climb out and stop it!) no one can see the value of your action (to save everyone on the plane) in a reasonable understanding. To them, you just tried to climb out the window of a flying plane.  What you know, is not what everyone else knows, thus you seem absurd.  The infidelity of sanity, like a rug that is pulled under ones feet, could happen at any time to anyone one. This is a shame because does this distinction to an extent not limit our ability to make dreams, imagination and idle mental wondering a reality? A certain magic is lost from our humanistic lives when the madness of life is no longer allowed to become a reality, and science fiction becomes only a mad mans dream.        

By Tomas Moon