If you go down that road then everything relates to everything. Colin Renfrew is a pioneer in Cognitive Archaeology, for example. — I like sushi

But, in the end, everything is related to everything. The test of Cognitive Archaeology is what it produces. There's no true or false here, only pragmatics (where the criterion is not the useful, or even the true, but only the interesting or profitable.) The issue I skated over is that subject divisions are not only about subject-matter and methodology, but also about practicalities and administrative convenience.
Then there is the issue that any subject needs to make its bread and butter. That means that ideas about education and research are essential to survival. The origin of the idea of the Humanities is the idea that there are some things that one needs to know in order to be a human being (a decent citizen of a civilized society). So their educational role was fundamental to everything else. What has changed is that nowadays, one needs to know about science in order to be a decent citizen of a civilized society.
(I'm not pretending that the concept of a

Science is what you study to get a high salary job. The Humanities (and the Arts) is what you spend your high salary on. — LuckyR

Neat, but wrong. If you want to get a high salary, Technology and Engineering or Business is what you need to study. But if you want to make real money, don't worry about studying, just get your hands on as much capital as you can, by any means possible. Science, Humanities and Arts are what make life worth living.

However, the distinction is not a simple binary, b&w polarization, and so the two modes can sometimes be made to work side-by-side. — ucarr

I agree. I was trying to outline an idea and left that point out for simplicity. Once you start looking, there are a good many disciplines that need to combine and mesh rationales and causal accounts. Indeed, the two are both useful in the ordinary, "common sense" explanations of actions. Though, admittedly, we appeal to causal explanations most often, I think, when something has gone wrong. Some actions are habits, which tremble on the brink of addictions. But addictions are not purely causal, since an addict is perfectly capable of rational action; it's just that the values that are prioritized are incomprehensible to us - no, that's the wrong word.

Discovery of "how" is rooted in the adverbial modification of the predication of the fact of existing things. — ucarr

Yes, you've said that before. But I don't really understand what you mean. Are you getting at what I would call levels of description? So, for example, a person is a human being (animal), a body (biology), a corpse (physics). Another example would be walking down a street as exercising or getting in the beer or starting a journey of 1000 miles. To me, adverbial modification means walking purposefully, or ambling or wandering or limping. But you might mean that interpretation is much more important in humanities disciplines than in the sciences. (Actually, I wouldn't take it for granted that physics means the same thing by "interpreting the evidence" as a historian does.)

To the main point, "how" drags [personal] consciousness into the frame of the lens of discovery. — ucarr

That's true, but it's not all always about what's conscious. Tacit knowledge is one example. The sub- or un-conscious seems to be a real thing. And there's all the process of data from the senses, which clearly enables consciousness, though it isn't available to consciousness.

There are fields that are an tightly meshed combination of both, — Tarskian

That's true, and we might learn a lot by seeing how such fields cope. Sometimes, I get the impression that they simply ignore the distinction, which sounds impossible, and yet, perhaps, it may be.

Yes, in the sense that architecture causally emerges from the building's practical, aesthetical, and sustainable qualities — jkop

I don't quite understand "causally" here. Surely, any building "consists" of practical, sustainable, aesthetic qualities among others; architecture is the art of combining them to meet various criteria. There needs to be a discussion about aesthetics that gets over the crude observation that aesthetics is "subjective" meaning that there can be no meaningful way of understanding aesthetic qualities. There are mathematical techniques for turning subjective opinions into data, but they are only a beginning. The traditional ideas that there are certain proportions of buildings that make them beautiful are another approach.

Maybe a lesson here is that reductionism can be a good tactical maneuver while the researcher is in the thick of the hunt for discovery - — ucarr

That may be true. I would hope it was more a matter of focus, of attending only to the context that is relevant to the task at hand.

It is true that the work on-site is the most visible and possibly most exciting phase of the archaeologist's work. The stuff back home is less visible and possibly less exciting; but it is where the objects begin to tell their story, so it is where the finds have value. So I prefer to include both phases under the heading of archaeology. There is no other source for pre-history, so once the narratives begin to appear, history and archaeology overlap, in my view. But it's really not worth arguing about.

Historians deal with the written word. I was pointing out this clear distinction as whoever posted what they need seemed to think historians were archaeologists. They are not necessarily mutually exclusive, but they operate on completely different levels of investigation and data collection. — I like sushi

That's true. The complication is this. For periods and places where there are no contemporary text sources, there is no other source than archaeology. Where both archaeology and texts are available, the two overlap, collaborate, and supplement each other. So I would want to say that where both are available, it is not important to distinguish between them, except in respect of the objects of study - differences in method are just the consequence of that. Both aim to tell a story of what happened.

Archaeologist. That is a science. — I like sushi

I have always thought of it as much more complicated than that. Something along the following lines:-

Archaeology is the study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. ... Archaeology can be considered both a social science and a branch of the humanities. It is usually considered an independent academic discipline, but may also be classified as part of anthropology, history or geography.

(That is actually a quotation, which I give because it saves me time and effort. I haven't given the source because authority is irrelevant, so it would be a distraction from what matters here.)

he comes up with a causal mechanism and looks to disprove it which is much harder because the event was singular in the past — Johnnie

This is not wrong, of course. But the use of the phrase "causal mechanism" here is an example of what happens when we get hypnotized by physics. Either questions about human behaviour are being pressed into the mould of what is appropriate for answering the questions of physics. Or the idea of a causal mechanism is being stretched to cover kinds of explanation that physics is designed to exclude. Either way, it is not helpful.

I'm sure that trotting round the argument about physicalism is great fun, but it seems like a well-known dance rather than a collaborative search for truth. I don't think it is helpful. Why don't we look at specific idea which is an interaction between a science and the humanities? That focus might allow us to see their differences more clearly.

The focus I suggest is the idea that the sciences are, in the end, social/cultural practices, as indeed the humanities are. To put it another way, the foundation of science is scientists in their social and cultural context. To put the point yet another way, physics is indeed everything, so is politics and so is economics, so is mathematics and so are art and ethics. The difference between all these approaches is not just in their subject-matter or their method; it is in what is important to them - the kinds of questions they ask and the kinds of answer they seek. Their objects of study may differ, and they may even work with different ontologies, but those differences are far from the only consideration and certainly not the predominating consideration. Understanding those differences may not answer all the questions, but I think it might enable us to ask questions more intelligently.

“Can human behavior be studied scientifically,"

It depends what you mean by "scientifically". If your paradigm of science is physics, then the answer will be that you can, provided you give the kind of answer that physics requires. But that kind of answer is not available in mathematics, so the paradigm is a bit embarrassing. You need to broaden your scope to allow different ways of studying things, without worrying so much about physics or even, perhaps, what is to count as scientific.

Once you have allowed that, it becomes possible to consider what ways of studying human behaviour are appropriate, and recognize that what we accept as an explanation of human behaviour is different from both physics and mathematics; one might characterize it as the search for the reasons for behaviour, for a rationale. (Causal explanations are also sometimes appropriate here, but not necessarily of the kind that physics recognizes.)

This opens up a more interesting question than the original one, because it identifies explanation as simply the search for understanding and explores what provides understanding of each question, rather than trying to press all questions into the mould of some paradigm - or even a small number of paradigms - in favour of pursuing our real needs.

Falsifiability is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for science. It must also be possible to experimentally test the falsifiable hypothesis. — Tarskian

Astronomy seems to be a purely observational discipline, though tests are indeed possible by means of prediction. It's just that experimental tests are not possible.
Ethology seems like another candidate in which experiments are not to be expected. This is partly for methodological reasons, because the behaviour to be studied needs to focus on animal behaviour in the context of animal lives, rather than a cage in a laboratory. Again, testing by prediction is possible. Ethology does not restrict itself to explanations of the kind required by physics, but often develops what I would call rationales, rather than causes. Perhaps you don't consider it to be a science. There are studies of animal behaviour that are based on experiments, but I think you'll find they are classified under the heading of psychology.

What are you an expert in?
— Ludwig V

Synthesising expertise.

Yes, they are.
— Ludwig V

It seems you think you are the expert after all. And you have only just heard of Turchin's work. Probably not even read the paper yet. :up: — apokrisis

I'm sorry you have decided to give up on our discussion. I thought there was a reasonable chance that we might end up with an understanding, if not an agreement. Still, it has been of interest, so thank you for your time and effort.

Not sure that is how it works. Seems it ought to require being expert across all fields. — apokrisis

The days when that was possible are long gone.

What are you an expert in?

But they are not different approaches. — apokrisis

Yes, they are. One respects the data and draws some worth-while conclusions. The other distorts the data by enforcing a single model on it.

I would have thought you could work out my interests by observing what I take in interest in. Equally, I would have thought that you could work out my expertise by reading what I say. Actually, my main interest is philosophy, which involves being interested in everything and having limited expertise in anything. Like many philosophers, I don't like being categorized.

This is much more interesting that hierarchy theory. The results are not very surprising, which leads me to give them considerable credence. Three comments:-
1. Statistics are of great value in suggesting where to look for the causal narratives that explain the observed correlations. They do not explain the associations they identify. So we should not go overboard about their value.
2 The proposition that this is an evolutionary process is interesting. It neatly avoids the need to consider what the agents involved were thinking when they act - as when they adopt agriculture or iron weapons. But nonethelss they were thinking something when they adopted agriculture and iron weapons. It is easy to imagine that they recognized the advantages of these new inventions and that's why they adopted them. There is a back-handed recognition of this in the last paragraph:-

Although factors such as infrastructure provision, market and monetary exchange, and ideological developments do not appear to play a significant causal role in propelling subsequent advances in social scale, hierarchical complexity, or governance sophistication, they likely are integral elements that support and maintain the results of that growth, which would account for the relationship observed between these factors in previous scholarship.

3 (Added after posting) It's also worth pointing out that the data on which the project relies is not gathered in any of the ways familiar to us nowadays. It is deduced from the clues available to us. Very often this involves reconstructing the lives and habits of the people. So narrative history is still needed as a basis for the generalizations.


So thank you for drawing my attention to this. I did tell you that I am not in principle opposed to these approaches. This one is much better than the other one because it seems capable of dealing with the data without unduly distorting it.

Hierarchy theory in the systems science tradition is at pains to show how constraints are the reason there can even be freedoms. — apokrisis

Well, that's very kind of it. But it's not very meaningful in the context of water or electricity systems. Both do whatever they do. They are not constrained or free (except metaphorically).

It is about the dialectical interaction between parts and wholes. And the two have to complement each other for the structure to persist.

Yes, some philosophers are very keen on parts and wholes and dialectical relationships. But everything depends on what kind of part and what kind of whole. The relationships between the two are different in different contexts. For example, what are the parts of a rainbow? Of a number, say 3? Dialectical relationships in causal contexts are simply causal loops, but in Hegelian philosophy quasi-logical relatioships and in human beings conversations.

So wholes are more than just the sum of their parts ... in that wholes shape those parts to serve their higher order purposes. Wholes aren't accidental in nature. They produce their own raw materials by simplifying the messy world to a collection of parts with no choice but to construct the whole in question.

Well, it's perfectly true that if you lay out all the parts of a car on a work-bench, you don't have a car. If you have to add something, you didn't lay out all the parts. If you don't, what more do you add? Hint - what do you mean by "more" and what do you mean by "sum"?
I don't see many wholes about producing things or simplifying things? So where does all that activity take place? To put it another way, Before the whole is produced, it cannot create its parts (because it doesn't exist). So the whole cannot produce it's own parts.

So where does sand get its shape so that it might compose a beach? How does it get roundish, smoothed and graded by size? What higher constraints lead to the formation of every particle of sand.

Well, a beach is produced because the weather and the water erode rock into separate pieces, which then are eroded into small and smaller pieces (the action of wind and weather now includes causing them to physically erode each other) and are eventually collected together to form a beach, which is shaped mainly by the water in the adjacent lake or sea. What is "higher" about weather and water? There's no "higher" constraint. A school of sardines is formed in different ways, and a glacier in what that are different again. No "higher" constraint is involve. You are confusing the process by which human beings (and some animals) make things with the inanimate processes that make inanimate things. You seem determined to see hierarchies in everything, rather than considering whether each thing has a hierarchical structure or not.

An army has to meet its purpose. So there is a Darwinian selection principle that produces the constraints which an army - as a human institution with regulations, history, a social memory - embodies.

Yes. There are circumstances when it makes sense for us to form a hierarchical social structure. Closely co-ordinated action and fast decision-making are obvious factors. An army needs its hierarchy in order to fulfil its purposes. What are the purposes of societies in general? There are different societies that exist for different purposes, and they will adopt the structure that suits their purpose; that may or may not require a hierarchical structure. Let's say that the purpose of Society is to provide "life, liberty and the opportunity to purse happiness". The key point is that it exists for the benefit of its members - (if it does not, then it is tyrannical, unless the members have volunteered and can leave - neither of which is true of a state). So who is in charge? The top of the hierarchy? Or the bottom?

But that was because economics lacked the larger constraint of a historical perspective on social order. — apokrisis

Ah, so pure form is not enough on its own, and that pesky unmathematical history turns out to be essential.

Economics too is being pulled into this new cross-disciplinary exercise of applying the lens of dissipative structure to an understanding of why our historical arc of development has been what it is. — apokrisis

What do historians say about the usefulness of that lens in understanding a historical arc?

I think that the vast majority of academic papers are considered to be irrelevant. In that sense, it does not matter if the justification supplied is solid or not. Nobody cares anyway. — Tarskian

An academic paper is a terrible way of publishing research. Nobody really knows, but it seems likely that more than half of academic papers published are never read by anyone except the author and a journal editor or two. I just feel pity and admiration for the editors (and referees).

I saw one estimate that 90% are never cited by anyone. Reading a paper to your own colleagues will almost certainly get more exposure than sending it to a journal.
Of course, there's a lot of argument. I couldn't find any attempts to measure how many are irrelevant.

(Numbers are indicative only, based on the first page of a Google search)

Pretty much the case in mathematics. One result is that even competent referees skim over details too often, especially if the author is a respected academic. Lots of mistakes are published, mostly non critical.

We searched Scopus for authors who had published more than 72 papers (the equivalent of one paper every 5 days) in any one calendar year between 2000 and 2016, a figure that many would consider implausibly prolific1. We found more than 9,000 individuals, and made every effort to count only ‘full papers’ — articles, conference papers, substantive comments and reviews — not editorials, letters to the editor and the like. — Ioannidis, Klavans and Boyack - Nature.com

Nobody wants academic posts to be a sinecure. But it would be nice if we could incentivize them to spend their time usefully. How about rewarding them better for being good teachers than for producing research that no-one wants?

I was just trying to hit home that meaning behavior comes from processes which are independent of our own notions of meaning. — Apustimelogist

Yes. In a sense, the processes act blindly. But that implies that they follow rules, which they don't. They do not differentiate between following a rule and not following it. They don't recognize rules. So they don't explain them - any more than they explain why 2+2=4 and not 5.

By physical laws I just meant the way the world tends to behave independently of perspective; obviously this is not coherently accessible, but we infer that there id a world that exists and behaves consistently regardless of who is looking. — Apustimelogist

If "the world" is not coherently accessible, our inference that it behaves consistently regardless of who is looking is a hope, not a fact.

Physics is the ultimate grounding since brain dynamics, computational behaviors are in principle implemented in the entities of physics. — Apustimelogist

How is that not reductionist? The bitter truth is the physics is just another way of conceptualizing the world, another lens through which to survey it. And that conceptualization cannot recognize rule-following behaviour. Causes are not correct or incorrect. They just are what they are.

know-that is a special case of know-that - or at least that is how it is implemented. Know-that is enacted. — Apustimelogist

I hope there's a typo there and you meant that know-that is a special case of know-how. I would agree with that. Articulating one's knowledge is also a case of a know-how that is quite distinct from the know-how that one is articulating. Quite a surprise - especially to philosophers!

mindless algorithms — Apustimelogist

Forgive my ignorance, but I had this naive impression that an algorithm is a rule.

The systems view is now moving from thermodynamics and biology to social science and human history. It claims to add mathematical rigour to the conversation. — apokrisis

You make it sound like the weather. But what you mean is that systems theories are now trying to apply it to social science and human history. Judging by some people, they are more likely to try to impose it. There is always a danger with these projects that you will fit the data to the theory, rather than the other way about. If you start off by saying that only systems theory knows what a hierarchy is, you're in trouble already, because you have defined your data out of existence.

You might like to think about the history of economics. For a long time, it clung to mathematical rigour. But now the limitations are being recognized and different, more humanistic approaches are being developed. Mind you, economics has an inherent limitation, that its predictions are known to the actors and affect their behaviour. The same will apply here.

Mathematical rigour is all very well. In its place.

Mind you, I'm not opposed to systems approaches in principle. So I'm quite happy to await results.

The character of the Irish is that they are lazy and so must have their land taken from them so that English capitalists of better character force them to be productive for their own good. — Moliere

Yes. They used the same argument to justify enclosures in England as well. It's a case of finding a weapon, not the truth.

I don't think that we make the same judgment of another person when we say they are incompetent because we're not judging whether their character is such that they are naturally incompetent: it leaves open the possibility of learning, as well as not making inferences about people who are of the same kind having such-and-such a character. — Moliere

"incompetence" is a legalistic term, but it includes permanent conditions like Down's syndrome as well.

But I am talking about hierarchy theory as a branch of science and not in that everyday sense. — apokrisis

Yes, you said that before. "pure form".

This paper compares the two known logical forms of hierarchy, both of which have been used in models of natural phenomena, including the biological. I contrast their general properties, internal formal relations, modes of growth (emergence) in applications to the natural world, criteria for applying them, the complexities that they embody, their dynamical relations in applied models, and their informational relations and semiotic aspects. — your link

Not being a mathematician, I'm not qualified to talk about that. But you seem to be talking about applying that pure form to social structures, though I notice that the article considers only applications to the "natural world". I think I'm qualified to talk about social structures, in a philosophical way. Is that not a basis for a conversation?

this polarity is reflected in the design of a rational political architecture — apokrisis

Well, a lot of people have had a go at this. The first person who tried it is probably Plato. It's called utopianism and it is very dangerous. Next thing you know, you will be telling us that it should be imposed on us for our own good. The fact (if it is a fact) that it is a structure that occurs in nature is not a good argument that it should be replicated in human societies. On the other hand, if it is inevitable, in some sense, then it is already here and we can all go home.

This is very helpful.

This everyday kind of ethological hierarchical organisation – the one discussed in its genetic and evolutionary sense of the dominance-submission hierarchies found in social animals – is then sort of hand-wavingly exported — apokrisis

This is not helpful. In the first place "hierarchy" was invented to describe a human social structure. In the second place, it doesn't matter much where the term came from and what it meant in its original home, if the export proves helpful.

You have this notion of "power" as the social good to be distribute. And you mean power in the restricted sense of the power — apokrisis

Well, that description of power is yours, and I'm not at all sure that it is appropriate.

It is just weird how hierarchy is a term of abuse in the anglophone world. — apokrisis

Not all that weird. The term hierarchy most often encountered, as here, in the context of social hierarchies and, in that context, is very often associated with what one might call "one-way", "top-down" hierarchies. These posit one-way communication and control and that is, indeed, at least very often, tyrannical in a social hierarchy. When our leaders stop listening, they become ill-informed and make worse decisions. "Bottom up" communication and support is essential for such structures to work.

You are right that hierarchical structures can be found beyond the context of the social and indeed, the ethological. And its relevance should be evaluated in context. It is not difficult to see that a hierarchical structure might well be the most efficient and effective way of distributing or collecting goods, and so it would not be surprising to find structures like them outside the social context. But a structure that is an efficient and effective way of distributing or collecting things is not necessarily an appropriate way of organizing a society. In fact, the varieties of hierarchies once one starts looking round is positively dizzying; many of them are quite irrelevant to the issues of social hierarchies. I accept that they can work well and are even the best way for us to organize ourselves in certain situations. But in other situations, I very much doubt it.

Western social democracy had this vision of self-actualisation as a cultural good to be distributed evenly to all. Creating a social safety net was what ensured that every person had the same opportunities, if not the same outcomes.
Obviously then along came neo-liberalism as a corruption of that approach. Agency became such a one-sided concept that the social safety net could just be abandoned. A cost to strike off the balance sheet and so leave "everyone richer". — apokrisis

I agree with that analysis. There does seem to have been a crisis in the 1970's, and I think the arrival of neo-liberalism hi-jacked the post-war arrangements. That deserves an account to, though I haven't got one. Perhaps one day. Not that the world is waiting for it.

Human civilisation has raised the game still higher as we now can aspire to delivering "civilisation" as the scalefree good. But then we have to start digging into that to discover what it really means to us. — apokrisis

Yes. I describe that as liberal over-reach. It is a painful echo of the rhetoric of the imperialist age and it's no wonder there has been a push-back, leading to the crisis that we are now living through.

At least until someone comes along with another dumb one-note "good" such as happiness, or virtuousness, or being ethical, or whatever else tends to crop up in utopian fantasies of how a society ought to be run if only they were its dictator. — apokrisis

Yes. Prescriptions for the good life should only ever be offered as recommendations. Modesty, and a genuine interest in the other guy's point of view and respect for it. That builds community, which builds peace, which gives at least the opportunity for people to work out what is the good life for them.

It’s from Is Internal Realism a Philosophy of Scheme and Content? — Joshs

Thanks very much.

In any case, I am not interested in discussing physics with anyone before the moment of force of this high school problem is presented to me in Cartesian coordinates: — Lionino

That's a pity. I'm not interested in discussing philosophy with anyone who expects me to pass a test of any kind before they will engage. That will save me a lot of time.

Life, especially intellectual life, is messy and often annoying. But it's a lot better than an ivory tower.

Most people would use the word physical here, and then add their preferred term. Many non-dualist philosophers, however, would insert their preferred term in place of ‘physical’ in order not to perpetuate a dualism implied by physicalism. — Joshs

Oops! Not well written. Perhaps the problem of finding a suitably non-committal way describing the role of physics here was clear enough? Or perhaps I shouldn't try to describe that role until I have worked out what it is.

Data on how much of the scientific literature is reproducible are rare and generally bleak.

Yes, I had heard about that.

73% said that they think that at least half of the papers in their field can be trusted, with physicists and chemists generally showing the most confidence.

I'm not surprised that people were more optimistic. There must be a lot of resistance to accepting that the system is that bad. The cost of research is going to sky-rocket if all experiments have to be done twice, by different laboratories and people. But the incentives to be careless or reckless are very high. Too much competition.

Of course physics isn't concerned with explaining abstract reasoning. — Johnnie

Wouldn't that be circular?
Most people who are not dualists accept that there is a physical <insert your preferred term> of abstract reasoning, music, laughter &c. To deny that seems inevitably lead to dualism. The difficult issue is how to think of that relationship. "Cause", for example, implies reduction, "Foundation" is little better, because it is suggests "emerging", but that is hand-waving until some agreement about the phenomenon has been developed. I prefer "substrate" because that seems to involve minimal commitment.

Complex phenomena are by definition a result of simpler things combining. — Johnnie

That's a truism. The interesting question is whether you want to add "... and nothing else". As it stands, it suggests some version of atomism. But there is the question of what usually referred to as Gestalts, which has much to recommend it.

Thank you. :smile:

Thanks. I hope you won't find a final comment on common sense boring. Common sense, it turns out, has a philosopohical origin and a certain level of philosophical importance. Who knew?

The original historical meaning is the capability of the animal soul (ψῡχή, psūkhḗ), proposed by Aristotle to explain how the different senses join and enable discrimination of particular objects by people and other animals. This common sense is distinct from the several sensory perceptions and from human rational thought, but it cooperates with both.

The second philosophical use of the term is Roman-influenced, and is used for the natural human sensitivity for other humans and the community.
...............
It was at the beginning of the 18th century that this old philosophical term first acquired its modern English meaning: "Those plain, self-evident truths or conventional wisdom that one needed no sophistication to grasp and no proof to accept precisely because they accorded so well with the basic (common sense) intellectual capacities and experiences of the whole social body." .... In the opening line of his Discourse on Method, Descartes ..... stated that everyone has a similar and sufficient amount of common sense (bon sens), but it is rarely used well. Therefore, a skeptical logical method .... needs to be followed.... In the ensuing 18th century Enlightenment, common sense came to be seen more positively as the basis for empiricist modern thinking — Wikipedia - Common Sense

I realize that Wikipedia is not the most authoritative source, but I think it is likely more authoritative than I am.

I don't see researchers going on Youtube or Twitter to talk about their research, they are usually too busy for that. It is usually the university's journal (sometimes written by students) that writes the news pieces. Then we have MSM reporting on it, which is the bottom of the barrel. — Lionino

I'm glad to hear that. But you did say "literal idiots on Twitter quoting psychometric papers".

That sounds very wrong, but I don't know what they taught in Britain back in his time. — Lionino

I think that he was pulling my leg by exaggerating the facts. We didn't know each other very well at the time. But you see how easy it is to get the wrong end of the stick.

It's his mixture of biology with politics that is really close conceptually to the race-based reasonings for slavery: — Moliere

I don't deny that for a minute. I just think that we should acknowledge that his version wasn't based on race. In other words, the 18th century version not only attempted to justify slavery, but did not so racial grounds.

he doesn't explicitly put slavish souls into a biological category, but their essence differs from other members of the species giving a sub-species "kind" with essence; — Moliere

Yes. That's not in itself wrong - we do the same thing when we classify certain people as incompetent. What matters is what happens next.

I take it that no one can actually perceive a slavish or masterful soul, that there must be markers for that, and things like being non-greek would work for that. — Moliere

One might suspect that. But does the actual practice reflect that? For now, I can produce:-

There were four primary sources of slaves: war, in which the defeated would become slaves to the victorious unless a more objective outcome was reached; piracy (at sea); banditry (on land); and international trade. — Wikipedia - Slavery in Ancient Greece

In the case of the first three sources, a ransom was often sought as the first resort. In the case of the last, the actual enslavement would have happened elsewhere. I think it's pretty clear that although barbaroi were not excluded from slavery, they were not specifically targeted - as they were in the 18th century.
It's curious, thought, that Aristotle's criteria don't seem to have figured in actual practice at all. Perhaps we should give him credit for trying to introduce some criterion other than brute force.

I don't think it unreasonable to think that Aristotle prefers Greeks of the upper echelon, — Moliere

I don't deny that for a minute, either. I'm sure he also preferred Athenians to Greeks from other Greek cities as well. They were treated as foreigners, weren't they?

It's Aristotle's justification or reasoning about slavery that I think is similar to the later justifications.; though even in slavery there are better and worse masters, the belief that there are those who are inferior by their very nature -- and so needing a guiding hand -- seems pretty similar here: — Moliere

I'm not denying that. On the contrary, in the 18th century, a lot of the gentry would have read Aristotle. But Aristotle does not specify that speaking a foreign language or not being a Greek is evidence of being suitable for slavery.

Democratisation of knowledge wasn't the best blessing to this world. Now we have literal idiots on Twitter quoting psychometric papers to prove their case when they don't even know what a p-value is, and unfortunately such rubbish gets exposed to thousands of naïve people. But it is not like those people matter in the big picture often, so it is not too bad. — Lionino

H'm. In respect of physics, you may be right. In respect of other matters, I'm not so sure. We all worry about fake news, don't we? This is where it originates. And it matters.

Science books? Sometimes. Textbooks? That would defeat the purpose. Joe must exercise his common sense. — Lionino

I wouldn't dream of contradicting you. But it was a comment from a guy who qualified in physics before switching to philosophy (of science) for his Master's. He also told me that everything in the physics A-Level (School leaving) syllabus was false.

I don't know, my common sense has delivered to me consistently. — Lionino

You were fortunate. Mine was not. I had some nasty awakenings when I was young. I'm still very sceptical about what common sense tells me. But then, I'm also sceptical about what everyone tells me.

Democratisation of knowledge wasn't the best blessing to this world. — Lionino

Well, the world before the enlightenment ideal was not exactly ideal either.

More specifically, when it comes to Joe Public, he has no business touching research papers or textbooks or things of the sort. Most people can't solve a basic quadratic equation, and have never really heard of Kant. — Lionino

Perhaps part of the trouble is that many researchers are anxious to spread their news as widely as possible. Whether they are after fame or fortune or just research grants, I wouldn't know.

Assisting the poor and the needy is a perfectly legitimate moral obligation. If your own wealth exceeds a particular threshold, the laws of the Almighty insist that you help others in need. It is, however, not the government's job to enforce this. It is your own conscience that is supposed to do that. — Tarskian

Maybe I'm nit-picking, but I think "moral obligation" is a contradiction in terms. But the important question is whether the system achieves its objectives. What are the facts?

In the UAE, for example, the emir of Dubai is not a cleric. In Islamic history, the ruling sultan was rarely a cleric. Instead, he was typically the supreme commander of the armed forces. I do not believe at all that clergy should be the head of the army. — Tarskian

Ah, god and guns. That's all you need to be in control. Keep the two separate, and no-one's in control.

He (sc. Fukuyama) analyses political structure across the world from the year dot. Read Debt as well for the economic story. — apokrisis

Are you referring to "The End of History"? I'm really sorry and I may be prejudiced, but given what has happened since then, I think I have other priorities.

In a society, we would want everyone to have enough to eat, a bed to sleep, a voice in any decision making. These are goods to be distributed evenly. — apokrisis

That sounds like a good start. We aren't there yet. All suggestions considered.

If we step back to understand hierarchical order as a pure form, we can see that it is a distribution system. It is a way to distribute power, information, entropy, whatever, in an evenly balanced fashion across a closed and cohesive network of relations. — apokrisis

Are you saying that power is equally distributed in a hierarchy? Had you thought to ask those at the bottom of the heap what they think? What happens if I'm at the top and don't want to distribute power in an evenly balanced fashion?

A landscape is drained of water by forming a fractal network of trickles, streams, rivers and deltas. World aviation is organised into remote grass airstrips, small rural airports, large city airports, major international hubs. The mathematics of this is precise. A fractal distribution system has a log/log or powerlaw scale of size. That is how a geography can be efficiently covered so every drop of water or wannabe flyer gets an equal chance of participating in a well-organised network of flow. — apokrisis

I can understand how the system applies in the case of water or air travel opportunities - though "equal chance" is not an entirely transparent description. But what grounds are there to supposed that power behaves in the same fashion? I have a nasty feeling that power attracts power, so has an inherent tendency to inequality - like money.

In that sense, we can say that: if who makes the claim matters, then what he claims cannot possibly matter. — Tarskian

Ideally, I would do all experiments myself. But life's too short. I'm sure you agree.

If the field does not have an objective justification method, then such original research is not a knowledge claim to begin with. In that case, no publication by whoever is authoritative. — Tarskian

Well, that's clear enough. What do you do for fun?

In practice, that is not true. Competence in the field is not required, just common sense. — Lionino

Competence is over-stating it, I agree. But you are expecting more from common sense than it will deliver.

A physics textbook by a professor from Utretch, used in physics courses internationally, is authoritative, a researcher's blogspot is not. — Lionino

Certainly. But I'm not Joe Public, who will say "If it is by a professor, it must be right and anything from a university is OK. Where is Utrecht? How do I find out which courses it's used on? Didn't someone once tell me that science textbooks are always out of date by the time they are printed?"

I don't need to know neuroscience to have the common sense to not take at face value a research paper (which isn't made for laymen) from 2011 with 2 citations and 1 no-name researcher. — Lionino

That may be common sense to you and common sense to me. But it doesn't follow that it is common sense to everyone.

I tend favour incompetence instead of maliciousness or deceptiveness to explain these things — AmadeusD

I'm sure you are right, at least in a forum like this.

My issue is not with Quora, but more that you don't seem to be competent with physics in a way that you are in a position to judge good from bad in non-authoritative sources. — Lionino

I do understand how annoying it can be when someone pronounces authoritatively about something I know about but they clearly don't. It is particularly tempting in philosophy because the range of competence one would like to have is way beyond what is possible for most human beings. The big difficulty is that one has to have competence in a field in order to assess how authoritative a source is.

The sciences are concerned with “what,” whereas the humanities are concerned with “how.” — ucarr

This was an interesting attempt at the same sort of distinction. Every subject asks "What, Where, When" (and sometimes "Who") and so it is tempting to go for a distinction in terms of subject-matter. "How" and "Why" are traditionally (in philosophy) used to distinguish between causal and rational explanations, so they look like a good basis for distinguishing between science and the rest. But ordinary use does not follow the Aristotelian distinction between efficient and final causes, so I doubt if there's any mileage in this.

Yes, it means that science is an epistemic domain governed by a justification method. It really does not matter what exactly it is about as long as the justification method of testability can successfully be applied.
The same is true for mathematics. It is the epistemic domain governed by the justification method of axiomatic provability.
The humanities, on the other hand, are not an epistemic domain. They are a (collection of) subject domain(s). The humanities are generally about human behavior. — Tarskian

I liked this. I agree that most disciplines are partly characterized by their domains of authority and partly by the methods they adopt. There's a link between the two, which helps.

I notice that you don't mention the justification method for the humanities. That might be because they don't all have the same justification method. But I'm sure you'll agree that they do have justification methods - just not the same ones as mathematics and the sciences. (I assume that you count literature, history and philosophy among them.)

The human sciences (psychology, sociology, economics) are particularly interesting cases because they all have the same domain and their appropriate methodologies are not clear. (In philosophy jargon, they straddle the hard problem, and so are likely to end up having to decide how to solve it or dissolve it.)

Should we not apply the some version of the same structure (domain plus method) to the arts (performing and otherwise), not to mention the various professional (law, medicine, business, accountancy etc.) and applied (engineering, architecture, medicine) subjects and the unclassifiable subjects like politics and theology?

You say that nations require "a formal structure to enable the kind of cohesion suggested by society", do you mean something like civil laws, and the hierarchy they necessarily impose? — NOS4A2

I did mean something like laws - because they involve compulsion.

When people talk about structure in the context of a discussion about societies, states nations, they mean (so far as I know) some kind of social relationship. So friendship and love would also be regarded as social structure, though they are very different from laws. A family is a social structure, so is a corporation or a club, so is the army, navy, so is the government - most people (I think) would say that the government, or perhaps the constitution, is the structure that forms a state. It's one of those vague all-encompassing words that really ought to be specified whenever it is used. But its vagueness is also quite convenient sometimes.

The barbarians are uncivilized, as can be heard from when they speak "Bar bar bar", saying basically nothing, and so need an enlightened human of knowledge to direct them towards the best that the inferior can hope to achieve (since they won't reach for it on their own) — Moliere

That's not ancient slavery.
Certainly, the ancient greeks regarded foreigners as lesser beings because they couldn't speak properly. But ancient greek colonies don't seem to have behaved like European colonies later on. They didn't, so far as I can see, take over ownership of the hinterland, never mind its inhabitants. On the contrary, they were there primarily to trade.
The account of slavery that you are outlining is the barbarous version of it cooked up by Europeans to justify maltreating people they chose to see as savages. Ancient slavery included anyone who could not pay their debts, prisoners of war, common criminals. Whether they were members of the society that enslaved them was irrelevant.

Unionism is where I'm most familiar with syndicalism from (not that all unions run that way). I think that systems which reject representation are, on the whole, less chaotic because in order for measures to pass you have to build consent. That you have different perspectives with each brings about stability because it becomes less about what some individual person Represents to us, and more about what the collective wants. If you alienate less of the people in a collective, then it's more liable to be maintained by the people participating in it rather than torn down. — Moliere

I wouldn't disagree with you. It's probably slower than allowing representatives to make the decision, but the benefit in greater consensus is probably worth it. It certainly gives more power to the people. The desire of the establishment at the time of the Reform Act in 1832 not to undermine the representation system as it stood, rather than introducing mandating them, was undoubtedly reinforced by the fact mandating representatives gives more control to the voters.
Much as I respect the union practice, I'm not convinced that in our giant states mandating representatives would work at all well for the entire state. It's just too big and too complicated.

Some kind (sc. of hierarchy), yes, though I tried to pick as an extreme a contrast as possible to demonstrate that "some kind" has meaningful differences between the various instantiations (and even their structures of hierarchy will differ, or not-count as hierarchical between one another) — Moliere

I didn't mean to eradicate those important differences. Some hierarchies are more vicious than others. Whether any are not vicious at all, I wouldn't like to say.

That's the bit of human nature I'm targeting I think we have lots of reasonings to excuse social dominance, but for the most part it's our chimpanzee side which gives rise to such reasonings rather than the purportedly enlightened side. — Moliere

I see the point (but would be inclined to wonder whether chimpanzees are really as bad as human beings, for all their dominant ways). But I also think that in some situations, where decisions need to be made quickly or close co-ordination is required, there are practical reasons for choosing hierarchy. The ancient roman constitution had a provision that allowed the senate to elected a supreme commander, by-passing the political hierarchy (called "dictator") for a limited time to deal with an emergency - especially useful in time of war. It is high risk though and came unstuck in the civil wars that led to the establishment of the imperial system.

Primates live in gangs and follow the lead of a mafia boss. It's preprogrammed biology. — Tarskian

I'm not sure about "pre-programmed" biology. But even if it is pre-programmed biology, it doesn't show that it is pre-programmed in human beings.

Some may arrive there due to sheer brutality and force. In short, many dominant chimps behave like “self-interested thugs."

"Some may arrive..." and "many dominant chimps..." suggests very strongly that not all arrive in that way and some do not behave like self-interest thugs when they get there. If it was pre-programmed, they would all behave that way and only self-interested thugs would get to be dominant.

One difference between alpha chimps and mafia bosses is that alpha chimps get there in the socially recognized way and when they get there, their behaviour is socially acceptable. But then, the mafia began amongst a socially oppressed group in Sicily and live in a sub-culture in what they do is socially acceptable.

A hierarchy is not necessarily a mafia, even though a mafia is a hierarchy.

That’s the only distinction between “natural” and “artificial” societies I’ve been making. — NOS4A2

OK. If you had explained this up front, it would have been clearer what you were saying.

A common trick is to conflate a state or nation as a society. I just don’t know how one consider such an aggregate of human beings a “society”, so I’ll stick to the simpler ones. — NOS4A2

Yes, those words do get used in very sloppy ways. It's complicated and there are many different ways to live.

Remember that Aristotle thought the relationships between master and slave were natural. Do you? — NOS4A2

Now, there's a tricky question. Let's stipulate that "master" and "slave" are social roles that are backed by law - i.e. backed by coercion. It would not be wrong to say, then, that if those roles are not backed by law, they cannot exist in that society.
But could master/slave-like relationships exist without the backing of the law? Of course they can. There are two kinds.
One is created when a group is formed to function in certain kinds of environment, like a ship's crew or an dangerous environment, like an dangerous journey or a war situation. (Civilian police and some other roles are also like this.) In those cases, one (normally) volunteers and, in so doing, accepts the discipline required. We could say that because it is (normally) temporary and one can leave, it is a temporary master/slave relationship, but I think that would be misleading.
The other is a certain kind of relationship that has come to prominence in recent years, known as "coercive control". It is not backed by law - indeed, it is banned by law in some countries. In many cases, it is virtually indistinguishable, apart from the lack of backing by law, from slavery.

You'll notice that I've avoided the question whether such relationships - particularly the second one - are natural or not. The reason is simple. If I say that they are natural, then the moral implication is that they are not immoral - that's why Aristotle said that master/slave relationships are natural. He was misled, of course, but he couldn't really be expected to know any better, since slavery, in his times, was more or less universally recognized and taken for granted by everyone whose opinion we know about. Nowadays, in most parts of the world, we think that slavery is immoral and consequently we would be very reluctant to say that it is natural.

However, many animal societies are structured by a dominance hierarchy (pecking order). These are not exactly slave societies, but they are dictated by coercion, or the threat of it. But it would be meaningless to try to apply our moral standards to them. However, I do think that we should not think that we can eliminate informal dominance relationships between individuals and within social groups. The trick will be to prevent them becoming slave-like relationships.

A natural society, to me, is kinship. It consists of people we know: family, friends, those we trade with, or otherwise deal with on a consistent basis. The activity that operates here is premised on largely social and voluntary cooperation. — NOS4A2

Certainly, there are such social groups. There are also half-way houses in which volunteers sign up for a common purpose which, for one reason or another depends on cohesion. That requires an acceptance of discipline and usually, in practice, some kind of hierarchy whether formal or informal. (I'll mention these again below.)
I'm not at all sure what you mean by "the family hierarchy". Did you mean that we don't get to choose our at least our first parents and we are subject to control until we grow up? Certainly, relationships with our birth/childhood family (-ies) are rather different from our family relationships when we start our own families and both are different from our friendship relationships; all those are different from our work and business relationships. Perhaps social and voluntary co-operation dominate, but they are not the whole story. (I don't say that you are wrong)

Now, could a state or nation (or nation-state) be structured in that way, largely free of hierarchy. The issue here is that we need to consider social relationships that extend beyond "kith and kin" - people you know and people you are related to by birth or "marriage" (in its widest sense)?
It seems to me, that since you don't know these people, they cannot work in the same way as your kith and kin relationships. There needs to be a formal structure to enable the kind of cohesion that is suggested by "society" and I don't see how that would work if there were not some kind of hierarchy, no matter how benevolent and co-operative. In practice, I think you will find, there always has been some kind of hierarchy in states and nations and that is suggestive.

That makes sense. Though didn't I read earlier that you do take up some work or business opportunities from time to time? But I guess that's marginal.

It's a life-style choice. It doesn't happen to be mine.

Come to think of it, I have upped sticks and moved to somewhere new with no social links - apart from a job opportunity - a few times. So it isn't an all or nothing choice. There are options in between.

It seems to me, from the little I know about world history, that static societies do benefit from welcoming travellers and immigrant (and from their people travelling and sometimes moving out). On the other hand, travellers and immigrants do rely on ordered societies to move between.

One could discuss exceptions, like colonization of unoccupied land (though my guess is that has not occurred since pre-historic times) and imperialistic conquest. But they are exceptions.

So from the point of view of social philosophy, the best situation is for both patterns to co-exist.

During colonial times, the colonizing powers strictly prohibited access from the motherland to the colonies, except for some colonies earmarked for settling purposes, such as North America, Australia, and New Zealand. — Tarskian

Thanks for this. I'm glad I stuck to what I was sure of. Those countries were, of course, regarded as terra nullius because the societies there were not recognized as such. I'm not sure why. I'm pretty sure there was widespread settlement in Africa, though, as well. I forgot about that for some reason.

In fact, in my experience, every country where there is no serious excess of visitors -- think Barcelona and Venice -- tends to be welcoming, or even very welcoming to foreigners. They mostly treat you as a curiosum. They want to talk with you, go out with you, and so on. — Tarskian

I'm sure that's true. Less so when there are many immigrants, though. But there is still ambivalence, as one can see in the USA and Europe, especially Britain.

I just wanted to point out that picking up one's traps and moving elsewhere is not always an easy option.

All I’m saying is groups of people living anywhere needn’t impose a hierarchy on others. — NOS4A2

Well, there's no-one forcing hierarchies on us. Unless you are positing that hierarchies are only ever formed because some individual decides to grab power. But, if that's what happens, why is it unnatural?
You may well be aware that Marx, in the 19th century, developed the ideas known as communism - there are many varieties of this. His theory was that we would, in the end, develop communist non-hierarchical societies.

In the 17th and 18th centuries it was popular to speculate about the origins of society. Various theories were developed on the basis of that society was created. See Hobbes' Leviathan 1651, Locke'sTwo Treatises of Government 1689 and Rousseau Social Contract 1762. There was much interest at the time in the "savages" discovered in the Americas who provided a model for this process. In the early years of the 20th century, it was realized that all "savage" societies were all working societies before Europeans arrived, so the idea of the state of nature has been abandoned for lack of empirical evidence. Nowadays, we are aware that many animals, fish and insects form societies naturally, so the idea that societies are a distinctively human idea has lapsed. It seems that we naturally form societies.
The question now is why societies have evolved, on the assumption that they must have some evolutionary advantage. Non-human societies have various structures; you can find details and examples on the internet. But I think you'll find that many, if not most, of them are hierarchical.

This life strategy acknowledges the very limited or even inexistent ability of the individual to improve his current political environment while emphasizing his very real ability to simply choose another one. — Tarskian

Yes. Many individuals have sought, willingly or not, to choose somewhere else to live. But colonization is over and many find it difficult to find another environment that will accept them. It helps to have a plenty of money. Without that, it is a very hard road even when you find somewhere else to settle.

It is morally superior because it encourages the individual to do something about the problem instead of endlessly complaining about it. — Tarskian

Complaining about things doesn't necessarily mean that you want to move. There are often good reasons to stay put even if there are difficulties to put up with.

They didn’t have to. They just wanted to. — NOS4A2

Yes, I expect that there were people who were keen to take advantage. But the question is, could cities have supported that many people in a hunter-gather life-style? It's a complicated question and I think that a definitive answer would be hard to impossible to get. So there may well have been an element of choice. In some way, cities must have offered something that was desirable to everyone. What could it have been. Agriculture arose around the same time, so that might have had something to do with it.

Now we have to adhere to the hierarchy or risk being punished. — NOS4A2

Do you seriously think that hunter-gather bands were all sweetness and light, with everybody doing exactly what they wanted and no force or compulsion?