Ch. 2 - The Pacification Process

[March-Hare]

tbarron,

Thanks for the thoughtful response.

The "arrow thing" would be "self love" for the person doing the shooting. In conditions of scarcity, you strategically eliminate rivals in order to preserve yourself. This has nothing to do with others opinion of you.

To be sure, Rousseau probably had an idealized vision of the noble savage, but I think the point that may be relavent to Pinker's argument is that the two types of self love capture the fact that there is a "break" between nature and society. Once you are in society the situation has changed radically because now you have the additional bad effects of amour propre. Under society, a good government is one that addresses these additional effects.

Hobbes view is contiguous. You are only ever addressing the problems of amour de soi. This is the classic case for the nightwatchman state.

This is where the such and such comes in. I think Pinker has to show that most of the progress in the reduction in violence stems from what you so aptly described as the "typical trajectory of our hard wired capacities". This also gets him the continguous version of state formation. I'm not sure his argument is tight enough to do this.

[tbarron]

tbarron,

Thanks for the thoughtful response.

Thank you. I'm enjoying the conversation and I'm finding that the discussion is making me read the book more carefully and I'm getting more out of it as a result.

The "arrow thing" would be "self love" for the person doing the shooting. In conditions of scarcity, you strategically eliminate rivals in order to preserve yourself. This has nothing to do with others opinion of you.

Okay, but I thought acts based on amour de soi "are naturally good and not malicious because amour de soi as self-love does not involve pursuing one's self-interest at the expense of others." (quote from the Wikipedia page on amour de soi) Wouldn't that disqualify acts (like shooting someone with a poison arrow) that damage the interests of another? Am I misunderstanding something?

To be sure, Rousseau probably had an idealized vision of the noble savage, but I think the point that may be relavent to Pinker's argument is that the two types of self love capture the fact that there is a "break" between nature and society. Once you are in society the situation has changed radically because now you have the additional bad effects of amour propre. Under society, a good government is one that addresses these additional effects.

Hobbes view is contiguous. You are only ever addressing the problems of amour de soi. This is the classic case for the nightwatchman state.

This is where the such and such comes in. I think Pinker has to show that most of the progress in the reduction in violence stems from what you so aptly described as the "typical trajectory of our hard wired capacities". This also gets him the continguous version of state formation. I'm not sure his argument is tight enough to do this.

Okay. I think I understand what you're saying.

I guess I would disagree that there's a real break between nature and society. My understanding is that humans "in the wild" have always lived in groups, or societies, just like chimpanzees and bonobos and gorillas and baboons do. The only primate I'm aware that lives in solitude most of the time is the southeast Asian orangutan. The groups we humans live in today tend to be much larger, but we've always had to navigate social networks from the very beginning.

According to Rousseau's logic (as I understand it, which may be incorrectly ) the innocent noble savage would have to be a hermit, or orangutan, to avoid the corrupting influence of the group if he's to remain innocent and noble. But the vast majority of human beings have never lived that way -- generally humans have lived in tribal groups of 50 to 200 individuals and have always been concerned with the opinions and motivations of the other members of their tribe. In Rousseau's parlance, humans have never been free of amour propre because we've never been completely uninfluenced by other humans. We've never been "in nature" because we've always been "in society", we've always been part of a group.

I don't think Pinker is trying to argue that the reduction in violence is due to something innate (like hard-wired capacities), although he does acknowledge that human psychology is involved. If the argument were that the reduction in violence is due to innate human qualities, it would mean that the reduction is inevitable so we don't need to understand it, we can just trust that it will continue. My sense of what Pinker is saying is that the reduction is contingent, due to an interaction of psychology and history, that things could've gone a different way, and that if we want the peace to remain and continue, we had better understand what has caused it so we can act in ways that will foster its continuance in the future. Here are some quotes from the book that I think show Pinker saying this.

From the Preface:

Believe it or not -- and I know that most people do not -- violence has declined over long stretches of time.... The decline, to be sure, has not been smooth; it has not brought violence down to zero; and it is not guaranteed to continue.

(emphasis added)

Though theories of human nature rooted in biology are often associated with fatalism about violence, and the theory that the mind is a blank slate is associated with progress, in my view it is the other way around.... The belief that violence has increased suggests that the world we made has contaminated us, perhaps irretrievably. The belief that it has decreased suggests that we started off nasty and that the artifices of civilization have moved us in a noble direction, one in which we can hope to continue.

We may discover that a particular advance in peacefulness was brought about by moral entrepreneurs and their movements. But we may also discover that the explanation is more prosaic, like a change in technology, governance, commerce, or knowledge. Nor can we understand the decline of violence as an unstoppable force for progress that is carrying us toward an omega point of perfect peace. It is a collection of statistical trends in the behavior of groups of humans in various epochs, and as such it calls for an explanation in terms of psychology and history: how human minds deal with changing circumstances.

[The] mind is a complex system of cognitive and emotional faculties implemented in the brain which owe their basic design to the processes of evolution. Some of these faculties incline us toward various kinds of violence. Others -- "the better angels of our nature," in Abraham Lincoln's words -- incline us toward cooperation and peace. The way to explain the decline of violence is to identify the changes in our cultural and material milieu that have given our peaceable motives the upper hand.

I also don't think Pinker is arguing particularly for limited government, or a nightwatchman state, to use your phrase. I haven't finished the book yet, so something like that may come up but I don't know much about his politics. His Wikipedia page does say, "He has reported the result of a test of his political orientation that characterized him as 'neither leftist nor rightist, more libertarian than authoritarian'". I guess we'll see as we get further into the book.

So it seems that we are seeing some of this differently.

I appreciate you participating in the discussion, March Hare. I hope I'm understanding you correctly and not misrepresenting your point of view. If I do, I hope you'll correct me.

[March-Hare]

I hope I'm understanding you correctly and not misrepresenting your point of view. If I do, I hope you'll correct me.

No need for correction. I believe you have ferreted out weak points in the line I was taking.

I'm going to read more of the book and think about what you have posted before I comment further.

Just as a preview though:

My sense of what Pinker is saying is that the reduction is contingent, due to an interaction of psychology and history, that things could've gone a different way, and that if we want the peace to remain and continue, we had better understand what has caused it so we can act in ways that will foster its continuance in the future.

This is precisely the problem as I see it. Until he can show me what parts of his grand narrative of progress are attributable to psychology and which to history and show me that the parts he attributes to history do not undermine his notion of the blank slate I won't be convinced.

[DWill]

Knowing that Pinker thinks Dawkins' use of game theory explains the strategic uses of violence in species (p. 33), I wonder if he also might use some game theory to explain the continuing drop in violence in human groups. If violence becomes less and less strategically useful, its incidence would drop. It's not that evolution is occurring in a Darwinian sense--natural selection favoring less violent individuals for reproduction--but that culturally we have a learning curve, where it becomes obvious that larger, more complex and interconnected societies don't benefit from violence.

[tbarron]

I think that's right, DWill. I think Pinker would say that what has changed is not human neural wiring (i.e., we're not evolving into less violent creatures) but rather that human neural wiring is such that the tendency for violence and the tendency for cooperation are in delicate balance and very minor changes in the incentives a situation offers can shift human behavior dramatically.

So, given enough time, a "primitive" human from a chaotic tribal environment would be able to adapt to living in a more "developed" culture, and a "modern" human from the US or Europe (again, given enough time) would be able to adapt to life in the jungle with a tribe. Certainly, after a generation, there would be no obvious difference between the children of the primitive in NYC and other urban children, or between the children of the urban dropped in the jungle compared with other children in the tribe.

One thing that changes with civilization, for example, is that other people shift from being "enemies" to being "potential trading partners" and economic activity becomes possible. Once an understanding of the possibilities of economic activity develops, that can become a preferred mode of life for at least a portion of the population. At that point, violence becomes a clear evil in and of itself since it disrupts economic activity. Although, on the other hand, violence can sometimes be used as an economic tool -- remember Commodore Perry using the threat of force to open Japanese markets to US merchants in 1852. I think the point is that the human tendencies toward violence and cooperation are not far apart and the structure of the social situation is critical in determining which will dominate.

March-Hare, you wrote, "Until he can show me what parts of his grand narrative of progress are attributable to psychology and which to history and show me that the parts he attributes to history do not undermine his notion of the blank slate I won't be convinced."

What is your understanding of Pinker's notion of the blank slate? My reading of his book of that title was that he thinks the blank slate idea is mistaken and he disagrees with it strongly. The whole thesis of the book was that humans are born with some universal traits and patterns already in place and are definitely not "blank slates" in the classical sense of the term.

[March-Hare]

tbarron,

What is your understanding of Pinker's notion of the blank slate?

That was just sloppy writing in my previous post. For "his notion of the blank slate" read something like "his notion that there is not a blank slate". I read the book quite some time ago but my understanding is the same as yours.

As to the rest, still ruminating...

[March-Hare]

Knowing that Pinker thinks Dawkins' use of game theory explains the strategic uses of violence in species (p. 33), I wonder if he also might use some game theory to explain the continuing drop in violence in human groups.

Well I don't know anything about game theory but this seems to be exactly what I meant by contiguous. You want me to believe that a member of a group of chimpanzees (or of a group of hunter gathers) and a member of say the Prussian army circa 1765 are acting from the same set of strategic options?

I think Pinker would say that what has changed is not human neural wiring (i.e., we're not evolving into less violent creatures) but rather that human neural wiring is such that the tendency for violence and the tendency for cooperation are in delicate balance and very minor changes in the incentives a situation offers can shift human behavior dramatically.

But this is to say that Pinker's grand narrative is wrong. The very minor changes in the incentives--where do these come from? There are three options. Either they come from our neural wiring, or they come from something outside of our neural wiring, or they come from both. Since you said we are not evolving they are not coming from option one. Therefore, what is driving progress is factors other than our neural wiring. This is to make Pinker uninteresting. Why? Because we are now saying that whether we are blank slates or not change is coming from the structure of society and not from wiring.

According to Rousseau's logic (as I understand it, which may be incorrectly ) the innocent noble savage would have to be a hermit, or orangutan, to avoid the corrupting influence of the group if he's to remain innocent and noble. But the vast majority of human beings have never lived that way -- generally humans have lived in tribal groups of 50 to 200 individuals and have always been concerned with the opinions and motivations of the other members of their tribe. In Rousseau's parlance, humans have never been free of amour propre because we've never been completely uninfluenced by other humans. We've never been "in nature" because we've always been "in society", we've always been part of a group.

Whether or not we are interpreting Rousseau correctly, let's just let it stand for the sake of argument that we are never "in nature".

I think this strengthens my point directly above. It's actually a standard argument against the Hobbesian view. Pinker needs the Hobbesian view to draw the political consequences he wants. I will save an elaboration for a later post if the discussion continues.

[tbarron]

How do you know Pinker wants any particular political consequences? It sounds like you think he has his mind made up as to what the outcome should be and he's just trying to make the science come out right to support that. That could be the case -- I don't know the guy personally.

OTOH, the impression I get is that he really has considered all the plausible explanations he could find and he's letting us in on the thought process that he went through in analyzing them. I notice in Chapter 3 he says things like, "So here's what we see. Why would it be like that? Well, it could be because of A, B, and C. Or it might be D, E, F. But this other study shows thus and so, which tends to support D and E."

It sounds to me like his conclusions are tentative and he's open to the possibility of new information changing them, which is exactly the attitude a scientist should take. This could be window dressing, of course, and you could be exactly right about his motivations. That just not the impression I have so far.

[DWill]

Knowing that Pinker thinks Dawkins' use of game theory explains the strategic uses of violence in species (p. 33), I wonder if he also might use some game theory to explain the continuing drop in violence in human groups.

Well I don't know anything about game theory but this seems to be exactly what I meant by contiguous. You want me to believe that a member of a group of chimpanzees (or of a group of hunter gathers) and a member of say the Prussian army circa 1765 are acting from the same set of strategic options?

I'm not understanding your point about contiguity or your objection, but maybe I will in time. Pinker talks about how most higher species use violence in such a way as to increase their own chances of survival. Humans are probably no different, but with us it seems there was a shift over time, away from violent zero-sum (win-lose) relationships, to more positive sum (win-win) relationships. The strategic options for the hunter-gatherers vs. the Prussians of 1775 are presumed to be different, and these are not war strategies, if that's what you thought I meant.

I think Pinker would say that what has changed is not human neural wiring (i.e., we're not evolving into less violent creatures) but rather that human neural wiring is such that the tendency for violence and the tendency for cooperation are in delicate balance and very minor changes in the incentives a situation offers can shift human behavior dramatically.

But this is to say that Pinker's grand narrative is wrong. The very minor changes in the incentives--where do these come from? There are three options. Either they come from our neural wiring, or they come from something outside of our neural wiring, or they come from both. Since you said we are not evolving they are not coming from option one. Therefore, what is driving progress is factors other than our neural wiring. This is to make Pinker uninteresting. Why? Because we are now saying that whether we are blank slates or not change is coming from the structure of society and not from wiring.

Recently, group selection has been revived--first by E.O. Wilson--and by that theory it becomes possible to see humans growing in social capacity through real evolution, even over a relatively short period of time. That's controversial, though, and Pinker gives no indication that he believes it. I think tbarron put it very well when he attributed the reduction in violence to humans' neural wiring being flexible enough to respond to changes in incentives. Where these changes in incentives come is a question I do find interesting. The structural changes that societies go through accounts for some of it, and Pinker explains which changes were most significant. These I guess would be the "endogenous" factors, which indeed wouldn't be that interesting if they were all there was to it. We'd have a circularity by which people become less violent because their society does as well. But Pinker is on the lookout for "exogenous" factors also, ones that qualify as an external influence on the system. He doesn't use those terms until the next chapter, though.

I'm interested in what makes you think Pinker has a political axe to grind.

[March-Hare]

Hey DWill,

Sorry for taking so long to reply. I moved on to some other books and I'm just getting back to Pinker.

I'll take another crack at explaining what I mean by contiguity. Let me go back to Rousseau and I will try to point out what I think is useful. First, for the moment, let's just drop the whole noble savage thing. We then have this schema:

"state of nature"=amour de soi=violence

society=amour propre=exploitation and, of course, there is still the potential for reverting to a "state of nature" and violence as well

My example was meant to highlight the transfer from a state of nature where violence reigns to society where exploitation is added to violence. The violent acts of the Prussian soldier are serving the strategic ends of "exploitation" not self-preservation so they are not continuous with the hunter gather. They are not playing the same strategic game.

This brings me to the what makes me think Pinker has a political axe to grind question. I'm not so sure he has an axe to grind, but I do detect a tendency towards a conservative mentality.

In my view, it's typical of the conservative mindset to see the violence part and not the exploitation part. In other words the only thing to be eliminated is the violence of the state of nature even when one has progressed to society. This is how you end up with the minimal state of Leviathan + "gentle" commerce. I'm latching onto this because "gentle" commerce is a key component of the conservative narrative as to why the minimal state is sufficient. (Caveat--there is an additional component to Pinker's narrative that muddies the water for my interpretation. I am ignoring it for the moment.)

In this context, go back and read the passages around page 111 (Viking hardcover edition not sure if your pagination is the same) which lead up to the parable of the watch. In a word, Calvinism. Calvinism is the mythology of "gentle" commerce.