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865 lines
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<title>The possibility of philosophical spiritual animals</title>
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<meta name="author" content="Amr Gharbeia">
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<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 1.27cm; margin-right: 2.54cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
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<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt"><font color="#993366"><font face="Verdana, sans-serif"><b>T<img src="data:image/png;base64,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" name="TtsOtkCRS10_06" align="right" hspace="5" width="250" height="44" border="0">he
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possibility of philosophical spiritual animals.</b></font></font>
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Though the nature and function of the philosophical level of
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neurological organization is clear, the inevitability the
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philosophical spiritual stage of evolution is still in doubt, because
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it is not yet clear how epistemological philosophy can be tried out
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as a random variation on the arguments of the rational spiritual
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stage and tired out in a way that allows it to be selected for the
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power it affords. </font></font></font>
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</p>
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<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
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<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">Culture
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must evolve long enough at the rational spiritual stage for a second
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level of forensic organization to be tried out as a random variation,
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and that means that some rational subjects must be free enough from
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the immediate demands of survival to exchange arguments over many
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generations. It also requires writing and a love of argument —
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writing in order to bridge the gap between generations, and love of
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argument to spend the time and effort required to sort out which
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arguments yield the most coherent world views. These conditions can
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be provided in what is called civilized society. Thus, in order to
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show the inevitability of the philosophical spiritual stage, I need
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only show the inevitability of civilization, for we can assume that
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among the variety of civilized spiritual animals that would come to
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exist on the surface of a planet if they were inevitable, there would
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eventually be some in which epistemological philosophy would be tried
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out as a random variation in cultural evolution. </font></font></font>
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</p>
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<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
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<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">There is,
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as it turns out, an aspect of spiritual animals that would make
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civilized society inevitable, because the social aspect of spiritual
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animals can also have a structure that is capable of several levels
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of part-whole complexity. That is, levels of social organization
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would cause a series of <i>stages of social evolution</i>, and
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assuming that civilization is one of these levels, civilization would
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have an essential nature just like what evolves at any stage of
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evolution. And the overall course of evolution would be determined by
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how the series of <i>stages of social evolution </i>combines with the
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series of <i>stages of cultural evolution </i>that we have been
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discussing (that is, the spiritual stages of evolution that we are
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following, primitive, rational and philosophical, respectively). </font></font>
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</p>
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<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
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<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">Even
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in civilized society, however, epistemological philosophy is unlikely
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to be tried out, unless the more obvious ontological approach to
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philosophy has been tried out and found wanting. The inadequacy of
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religious attempts to unite the arguments of rational level culture
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in a compelling way is the only plausible reason to try constructing
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linguistic structures with a higher level of forensic organization,
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and since the world seems to be a natural world, the initially most
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plausible way of explaining everything in the world will be to
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identify the substances constituting it. Thus, the evolution of
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epistemological philosophy requires the culture of a civilized
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society in which dissatisfaction with religious explanations has
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spurred the development of a primitive form of ontological
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philosophy. </font></font></font>
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</p>
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<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
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<font color="#000000"> <font face="Times New Roman, serif">There was,
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as it happens, a spiritual animal at the civilized social stage of
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evolution in which ontological philosophy was tried out, namely,
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ancient Greece, and that is where we will find the origins of
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epistemological philosophy. </font></font>
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</p>
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<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
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<br><br>
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</p>
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<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 1.27cm; margin-right: 2.54cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
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<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt"><font face="Verdana, sans-serif">S<img src="data:image/png;base64,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" name="TtsOtkCRS10_07" align="right" hspace="5" width="250" height="26" border="0">tages
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of social evolution.</font><font face="Verdana, sans-serif">
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</font>Spiritual animals have a social aspect, as well as a cultural
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aspect, as part of their essential nature, and both are structures of
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the spiritual animal as a whole, though these structures are
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fundamentally different from one another. These aspects arise from
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how language is used to guide their behavior. The original social
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aspect is the fact that the members of spiritual animal are in
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continual linguistic interaction with one another, and the cultural
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aspect is all the linguistic structures that are, in principle,
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complete in the brain of each members. The use of language to
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distribute a plan is what coordinates the behavior of the members of
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spiritual animals in social level behavior, and higher levels of
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organization in the cultural structure distributed by language is
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what causes the stages in the evolution of spiritual animals that we
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have been describing. At the rational stage, as we have seen, the
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shared plan takes the form of mutually accepted rules (or arguments)
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governing social roles, and the social level behavior is just the
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existence of institutions. </font></font></font>
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</p>
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<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
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<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">Though
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institutions that persist over long periods of time may be considered
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a kind of “social structure” of the spiritual animal, they are
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not the kind of structure that can serve as a structural cause of the
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spiritual animals behavior. Institutions do not give the spiritual
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animal a geometrical structure that does not change over time. They
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give the social aspect of spiritual animal a spatio-temporal
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structure, for institutions are just a form of social level behavior
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that is generated by the cultural aspect. (This is, perhaps, most
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obvious in the case of economic institutions. Although they involve
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patterns in the interactions of members, they also include the social
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level behavior by which spiritual animals extract free energy and
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other resources from nature, just like any animal acting on other
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objects in space.)</font></font></font></p>
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<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
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<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">Spiritual
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animals are, as we have seen, different from multicellular animals
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(with nervous systems), because their animal behavior guidance system
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is not constructed by coordinating the behavior of the lower level
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organisms. Since its behavior is guided by the exchange of linguistic
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representations, no social structure is needed, except continual
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linguistic interaction, and its animal behavior guidance system also
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serves as its biological behavior guidance system for this social
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level animal. </font></font>
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</p>
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<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
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<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">The reason
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for calling this kind of social level animal a “spiritual animal”
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was that, unlike all other animals, it does not need any unchanging
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geometrical structure as a whole. The spiritual animal has no body
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except the bodies of its members. That gives the spiritual animal
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enormous power. Since the parts of its body can have any geometrical
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structure that is possible for objects in space that move as time
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passes, there is no limit on the spatial aspects that its animal
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behavior can have in acing on other objects in space. For example,
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when members coordinate their behavior to herd deer into a trap, they
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are like a giant animal in relation to their prey.</font></font></p>
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<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
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<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">However,
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the lack of any essential geometrical structure to the spatial aspect
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does not mean that spiritual animals cannot acquire a geometrical
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structure of a kind that can serve as a structural cause of social
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level behavior. </font></font>
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</p>
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<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
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<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">There
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is a way in which institutions can sustain a geometrical structure
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under the social aspect that would serve as a structural cause for
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helping to generate the behavior of the spiritual animal. That is the
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institution of property, for when it includes the ownership of
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parcels of land, it can impose an unchanging geometrical structure on
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the spiritual animal as a whole. As members observe the rights and
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duties defining the social roles of property ownership, the spiritual
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animal has, as least, an unchanging geographical structure. </font></font></font>
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</p>
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<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
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<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">Let us use
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the term ,“social structure,” to refer to what is <i>unchanging
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</i>about the geometrical structure of spiritual animal, reserving
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the term, “institution,” for patterns in the behavior of the
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members of spiritual animals that do not necessarily have an
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geometrical structure that does not change over time. Thus, social
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structures would include the geographical structures of spiritual
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animals with the private ownership of land. But there are also other
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kinds of social structures, as we shall see, which depend on a
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geographical structure, and they can, in a sense, be considered
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social structures with a higher level of part-whole complexity. </font></font>
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</p>
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<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
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<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">To be sure,
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nomadic spiritual animals also have a structure under their social
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aspect. But apart from its institutions, it is merely how the members
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are merely in continual linguistic interaction with one another, and
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so, let us speak of nomadic spiritual animals as having <i>only </i>a
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“spiritual social structure,” the minimal structure required by
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the essential nature of spiritual animals.</font></font></p>
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<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 1.27cm; margin-right: 2.54cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
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<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt"><i><b>Levels
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of social structure.</b></i> The possibility of spiritual animals
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having social structures of a kind that can serve as structural
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causes of social level behavior means that stages of social evolution
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are possible. If there is a series of levels of part-whole complexity
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involved in social structures, they can evolve in only one order,
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from one level to the next. And their evolution will be inevitable,
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if in each case, the higher level social structure is both functional
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and possible — that is, “functional” in the sense of generating
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social level behavior that helps control conditions that affect the
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spiritual animal’s reproduction, and “possible” in the sense of
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being a possible random variation with such effects, given the
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institutions that are evolving in the spiritual animal. Thus, if they
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lead up to civilization, they will show the inevitability of
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philosophical culture. Thinking of social structure in this way,
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there are at least three stages of social evolution during the
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rational spiritual stage — and another stage of social evolution
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that is eventually made possible by philosophical culture. </font></font></font>
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</p>
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<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
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<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt"><i><b>Nomadic
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bands.</b></i> This is the stage of social evolution at which we left
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the history of the evolution of rational spiritual animals, the stage
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whose limited resources and leisure posed a problem about the
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possibility of philosophical culture. Though members of spiritual
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animal are in continual linguistic interaction and they generate
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institutions as social level behavior, they do not have a geometrical
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structure as a whole, because they are always picking up and moving
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from one place to another in order to hunt and gather food. Their
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size is limited (from twenty five to maybe as many as a hundred) by
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the amount of food that can be acquired in this way. This is the
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stage during which the cultural evolution of moral rules would lead
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most easily to equality among members. </font></font></font>
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</p>
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<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
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<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt"><i><b>Agricultural
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villages.</b></i><i> </i>When environmental conditions became
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favorable (it happened about 11,000 BC in the Middle East at the end
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of the last ice age), some nomadic bands would give up hunting and
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gathering in favor of agriculture. The cultural evolution of natural
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science in nomadic bands would afford them enough knowledge of the
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efficient causes involved in plant growth and animal behavior to try
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out such an economic institution. In addition to being possible, it
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would be functional. The use of agriculture would provide so much
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more food that it would be possible for a spiritual animal’s
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population to grow without it having to divide into smaller groups
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(though that would continue to happen by setting up colonies), and so
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it would be naturally selected because of the advantages of increased
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population in fighting wars. Though such rich, sedentary spiritual
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animals would be easy targets for marauding bands, they could muster
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armies and construct defenses to protect themselves. </font></font></font>
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</p>
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<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
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<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">As
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population is grew, however, an increasing division of labor would be
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required to grow plants and take care of animals, and the institution
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that would inevitably evolve to coordinate their behavior in this
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activity is property, that is, ownership by different members
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(families) of different parts of land in their territory. Though
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there would be public areas and roads connecting different parcels of
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land, private ownership of land would be an unchanging geometrical
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structure of the spiritual animal. It would usually be stable over
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long periods of time, since the simplest way to assign new members to
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parts of land is by inheritance from parents (though the kinship
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would have to be adapted to provide for inheritance as members
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married outside their family). And it would be the foundation for the
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evolution of a higher level of social organization: class structure. </font></font>
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</p>
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<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
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<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt"><i><b>Civilization.</b></i><b>
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</b>The advent of agriculture would make it possible to accumulate
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great wealth, not only food, but other objects, both natural and
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manufactured, that are useful in some way. In some cases, so much
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food would be provided so reliably that the population increase would
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make it possible to sustain markets, cities, great differences in
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wealth, and large standing armies. With population growth, it would
|
||
become necessary to protect property from theft, to extract property
|
||
from individual to sustain public institutions, including a
|
||
government, judicial institution, army, and religious institution,
|
||
and more generally, to coordinate the behavior of the members of a
|
||
spiritual animal that was spread out widely over the land. Those
|
||
spiritual animals that happened on a variation on the institution of
|
||
property that could sustain a <i>class structure </i>would tend to be
|
||
larger, more stable, and better able to win at war, yielding
|
||
so-called civilization.</font></font></font></p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">One form of
|
||
class structure is slavery, that is, the ownership of other rational
|
||
subjects. This variation would probably be tried out only when
|
||
spiritual animals could sustain standing armies. One of the spoils of
|
||
victory in war would be slaves, and a standing army would provide a
|
||
sufficient level of coercion throughout the society to ensure the
|
||
dominance of masters over slaves. </font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">Another
|
||
form of class structure is feudalism, with many varieties. In Western
|
||
history, it involved a difference between two classes of society in
|
||
their property rights to the same parcels of land. Both classes had
|
||
the right to live on the land and consume what was produced there,
|
||
but one class supplied the labor for agriculture and productive
|
||
activities, while the other class coordinated their behavior and
|
||
protected the direct producers from foreign armies. Feudalism was not
|
||
mere coercion, because the lord and the serf shared the same culture,
|
||
and the mutual acceptance of its arguments required them to
|
||
acknowledge one another’s rights and duties. But members of
|
||
different classes did not intermarry. Class membership was inherited.</font></font></p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">There are
|
||
other forms of class structure, some involving several castes on the
|
||
model of feudal class systems, and slavery can be combined with them.
|
||
But there is no need to insist on any order in their evolution. In
|
||
all such spiritual animals, class structure is sustained by different
|
||
forms of ownership of the land on which the members live and interact
|
||
with one another. That is how their social level behavior is
|
||
generated. Class structure involves a relationship of domination and
|
||
submission between members of different classes, and that makes it
|
||
possible to coordinate the behavior of an enormous population over
|
||
the whole territory occupied by the spiritual animal. Such a class
|
||
structure is a higher level of part-whole complexity in social
|
||
structure, because the institution of property sustains a difference
|
||
between two classes of member everywhere throughout the territory.</font></font></p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">The
|
||
class structure of civilized society would make their evolution
|
||
inevitable. They would be naturally selected at the social level by
|
||
success in war because of the advantage of having a large population.
|
||
Thus, there are three stages of social evolution leading to
|
||
civilization, making it inevitable. And since class structure makes
|
||
it possible to sustain a large population over a wide territory, such
|
||
spiritual animals can provide the condition required to try out a
|
||
higher level of forensic organization as a variation on the arguments
|
||
being exchanged at the rational stage. Civilizations will tend to
|
||
provide the writing needed to retain arguments over many generations
|
||
and communicate them over wide areas, because writing evolves, if
|
||
only to keep track of the taxes required to support the government
|
||
and its allied institutions. Since there will be some members with
|
||
the leisure to argue, all that is required for philosophical culture
|
||
to evolve is a culture that fosters the love of argument and has
|
||
respect for the kinds of judgments about rational coherence on which
|
||
cultural evolution depends — except, of course, for a random
|
||
variation that tires out a higher level of forensic organization
|
||
involved in philosophy. We will trace the career of that stage of
|
||
cultural evolution. But first, let us consider a variation on the
|
||
class structure of civilized spiritual animals that will be relevant
|
||
in that career. </font></font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 1.27cm; margin-right: 2.54cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt"><i><b>Capitalist
|
||
class structure.</b></i> There is another stage in social evolution
|
||
that helps make the evolution of ontological philosophy possible.
|
||
Though it is just a form of the class structure that is
|
||
characteristic of civilized societies, it not only sustains an even
|
||
larger population than slave or feudal societies, but also contains a
|
||
form of evolution by reproductive causation that leads to the
|
||
evolution of increasingly powerful ways of producing food and other
|
||
useful objects. I am referring to capitalism. It can be tried out as
|
||
a random variation, as we shall see, only in spiritual animals with a
|
||
philosophical level culture, that is, where epistemological
|
||
philosophy has evolved, and since capitalism plays an essential role
|
||
in making ontological philosophy inevitable, it is relevant here to
|
||
describe the nature of this social structure. Then we will go back
|
||
and take up the issue about the evolution of philosophical culture.</font></font></font></p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">Capitalism
|
||
is an economic system in which processes of production are set up
|
||
when capitalists put forth the capital to purchase labor power and
|
||
other commodities required to produce commodities of some kind and
|
||
they then sell them on the market for a profit. </font></font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">Capitalism
|
||
is a class system, because members of the spiritual animal engage in
|
||
such processes of production in two, fundamentally different ways: as
|
||
capitalists, who put forth their money to earn a profit, and as
|
||
workers, who sell their labor power to the capitalist to earn a wage.
|
||
But the class difference is not necessarily heredity, since
|
||
individuals can change classes. Moreover, it is a relatively abstract
|
||
class structure, because it does not necessarily divide the members
|
||
of a spiritual animal into different classes. Particular individuals
|
||
can occupy both roles as long as capitalists can hire workers and the
|
||
necessary relationship of domination and submission exists.</font></font></p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">Capitalism
|
||
is a contained form of reproductive causation in which the
|
||
“reproducing organisms” that evolve are processes of production,
|
||
because they have both kinds of structural effects, reproduction and
|
||
non-reproductive work. </font></font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">Production
|
||
processes are capable of reproducing themselves, because when the
|
||
sale of the commodities returns more money than was invested in them,
|
||
capitalists will invest not only in another round of production, but
|
||
also in expanded production processes. That is, they reproduce in
|
||
space as well as in time. </font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">Processes
|
||
of production also do non-reproductive work, like reproducing
|
||
organisms, namely, producing commodities. Such structural effects can
|
||
control the conditions that affect the reproduction of the process,
|
||
because they can be sold on the market for a profit. </font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">What
|
||
makes capitalism a form of evolution by reproductive causation is the
|
||
competition among capitalists for a profit on their investments. The
|
||
reproduction of production processes by the reinvestment of profits
|
||
expands their population, and since the market for any commodity is
|
||
finite, some production processes will eventually be unable to make a
|
||
profit and their reproductive cycles will come to an end. Thus, a
|
||
natural selection is imposed by their own reproduction, just as in
|
||
biological evolution, except that it occurs among production
|
||
processes within a spiritual animal. That is how reproductive cycles
|
||
of production processes add up over time in the “space” of a
|
||
spiritual animal.</font></font></font></p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">It
|
||
is not just chance, however, which processes of production succeed in
|
||
reproducing, because those capitalists who can produce the same
|
||
commodities more efficiently (or more useful commodities just as
|
||
efficiently) will be able to make a profit from selling their
|
||
commodities and thereby reproduce their process of reproduction,
|
||
while other, less efficient production processes will not. This form
|
||
of natural selection will be called “capitalist selection.”
|
||
Capitalist selection is made <i>by </i>success in reproducing, as in
|
||
biological evolution, but it is made <i>for </i>returning a profit
|
||
and, thus, <i>for </i>producing commodities more efficiently. Since
|
||
capitalism constitutes the ontological cause for gradual evolution,
|
||
the simpler reproductive global regularities, it is ontologically
|
||
necessary that there will be change of production processes in the
|
||
direction of natural perfection for both the processes of production
|
||
and at the ecological level. </font></font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">Capitalist
|
||
selection means that there will be a gradual change in the direction
|
||
of maximum holistic power for production processes of their kind.
|
||
Their greater power is holistic, because when all possible
|
||
efficiencies are made, all the conditions affecting their
|
||
reproduction that can be controlled come to be controlled. </font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">At the
|
||
ecological level, the ecological niches to which production processes
|
||
adapt are the various kinds of commodities that people are willing to
|
||
buy (because they are useful in some way), and the “free energy”
|
||
being tapped is the money people are willing to spend. At the
|
||
ecological level, therefore, there are many different industries, and
|
||
since in each of them, capitalists compete for profits, overall
|
||
production in the spiritual animal changes in the direction of a
|
||
maximum holistic power at the ecological level that parallels
|
||
biological evolution. Production extracts as much money from
|
||
consumers as possible while at the same time using the fewest and
|
||
simplest factors to produce the commodities they buy. </font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">There
|
||
is, however, a new wrinkle in the case capitalist economic evolution,
|
||
because natural science supplies new means for producing useful
|
||
objects, and these technological changes not only make production of
|
||
the same commodities more efficient, but also make it possible to
|
||
produce other commodities (that is, other kinds of useful objects
|
||
that people will buy). But it is a two-way street, because the
|
||
evolution of capitalist production also develops the technology that
|
||
natural science needs to progress in the discovery of the efficient
|
||
causes at work in nature. Thus, there is an interaction between
|
||
capitalism and natural science that propels the evolution of both,
|
||
one by capitalist selection and the other by rational selection. </font></font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">Like any
|
||
stage of evolution, therefore, kinds of production processes start
|
||
off simple, uniform and barely able to make a profit (controlling the
|
||
conditions that affect their reproduction), but as a result of
|
||
reproductive causation by capitalist selection, they become
|
||
increasingly complex, diverse and powerful at making a profit. But
|
||
considering how the evolution of technology combines with cultural
|
||
evolution to propel the evolution of natural science, the gradual
|
||
change of production processes in the direction of maximum holistic
|
||
power is chasing a goal that is continually receding because
|
||
technological advances are not merely increasing the efficiency in
|
||
the production of the same commodities, but changing the commodities
|
||
that must be produced to make a profit. It is as if the ecological
|
||
niches were changing as the organisms adapt to them, though it can
|
||
also be seen as capitalist production evolving maximum holistic power
|
||
to satisfy the wants of the members of the spiritual animal.</font></font></p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 1.27cm; margin-right: 2.54cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">Civilization
|
||
must evolve before capitalism can begin, because competition among
|
||
capitalists in the production of commodities requires a large market.
|
||
And a class structure must already exist to put individuals in a
|
||
social situations in which it is possible to try out the capitalist
|
||
class structure as a random variation. That does not mean, however,
|
||
that capitalism inevitably evolves from civilization. The
|
||
institutions required for capitalism include not only a market for
|
||
exchanging goods, but also a market for purchasing and selling labor
|
||
power, and since such exchanges must be made with a great efficiency
|
||
and reliability, the culture of the spiritual animal must include
|
||
rather demanding rules about contracts. Moreover, the institution of
|
||
property must not be so committed to feudal forms of land ownership
|
||
for individuals to accumulate large quantities of capital. Such
|
||
conditions are provided as we shall see, in philosophical spiritual
|
||
animals. That is very likely the only situation in which capitalism
|
||
can evolve for the first time. It is, in any case, the only kind of
|
||
spiritual animal in which capitalism will have the evolution of
|
||
natural science to interact with. </font></font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">It
|
||
seems likely, therefore, that history, the penultimate phase of
|
||
overall evolution, is the result of an interaction between stages of
|
||
social evolution and stages of cultural evolution. </font></font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">Culture
|
||
generates the institutions (mainly property) on which a civilized
|
||
social structure depends, and civilization (class structure) provides
|
||
the conditions necessary for epistemological philosophical culture to
|
||
evolve. </font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">Epistemological
|
||
philosophical culture apparently provides the conditions necessary
|
||
for capitalism to evolve in civilized society. </font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">And
|
||
capitalism is required, as we shall see, to provide the conditions
|
||
for ontological philosophical culture to evolve from epistemological
|
||
philosophical culture, because without the interaction between the
|
||
capitalist evolution of production and the cultural evolution of
|
||
natural science, natural science would not advance far enough for
|
||
ontological philosophy to be convincing. </font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 1.27cm; margin-right: 2.54cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt"><font face="Verdana, sans-serif">P<img src="data:image/png;base64,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" name="TtsOtkCRS10_08" align="right" hspace="5" width="250" height="24" border="0">re-Socratic
|
||
philosophy.</font><i> </i>Let us, therefore, set the stage for the
|
||
first step in this sequence and explain how epistemological
|
||
philosophy evolved in rational level culture. Its way is prepared, as
|
||
I have suggested, by a primitive form of ontological philosophy,
|
||
because the most obvious way to construct an arguments with a higher
|
||
level of forensic organization than those rational level culture is
|
||
on the basis of naturalistic understanding. From the historical
|
||
record, we know that it occurred in ancient Greece. The Pre-Socratic
|
||
philosophers tried out a kind of philosophical argument that was
|
||
promising enough, despite being doomed by the lack of natural
|
||
science, to become the model for epistemological philosophy. </font></font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">Conditions
|
||
were especially favorable in ancient Greece. Not only did the ancient
|
||
Greeks have writing, a class structure to support a leisure class,
|
||
and a love of argument, but there was a number of more or less
|
||
independent spiritual animals with the same culture, located in
|
||
different city-states. Since they traded by sailing across the Aegean
|
||
Sea, they could exchange arguments, but their physical separation
|
||
from one another made it hard for any one city state to completely
|
||
dominate all the others, as happened in other early civilizations,
|
||
such as Egypt and Babylonia. Since there was no centralized
|
||
government that could increase its power by suppressing the exchange
|
||
of arguments, it was possible for culture to evolve freely. And as it
|
||
happened, the ancient Greeks had great respect for argument and sound
|
||
rational judgment. </font></font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">The
|
||
autonomy of city-states in ancient Greece indicates that they were
|
||
independent spiritual animals. But there were periods in which these
|
||
spiritual animals were united more like a single spiritual animal,
|
||
for example, in the Persian wars early in the fifth century. On the
|
||
other hand, there were also periods in which they were so independent
|
||
that they were at war with one another, as in the Peloponnesian war
|
||
in the late fifth century. This raises a general issue about the
|
||
boundaries of spiritual animals.</font></font></font></p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><i>The
|
||
boundaries of spiritual animals.</i> The nomadic band of language
|
||
using animals is the original model for spiritual animals, but even
|
||
before agriculture, the extent to a single spiritual animal was
|
||
unclear, because nomadic bands were related in tribes and tribes
|
||
could act as a whole, for example, in wars with other tribes. The
|
||
capacity of spiritual animals to merge and divide makes their
|
||
boundaries inherently less permanent than other organisms. But in
|
||
general, the reality of the social level animal is manifest in the
|
||
capacity of the members to act as a whole to control all the
|
||
conditions affecting social level reproduction, and the extent of its
|
||
population depends on how broadly the behavior of rational subjects
|
||
are coordinated in generating social level behavior. Though this
|
||
unity is most obvious in its original form, the nomadic band, it can
|
||
still be seen in the nation state, where the institution of
|
||
government makes territorial boundaries clear, for they are units
|
||
that are responsible for everything done as a whole. Even there,
|
||
however, boundaries shift, and in the contemporary period, nation
|
||
states may be in the process of being obliterated entirely as
|
||
spiritual animals slowly merge into a single, planet-wide spiritual
|
||
animal. </font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">The
|
||
capacity of spiritual animals to merge and separate does not,
|
||
however, show that they are not social level animals. What the
|
||
shifting boundaries of spiritual animals show is that they have a
|
||
spiritual nature, for their spiritual nature makes it as easy for
|
||
them to merge with one another as to divide and reproduce. Thus, it
|
||
may make sense to think of groups <i>within </i>contemporary complex
|
||
societies as spiritual animals, when they normally act as a whole
|
||
independently of other groups over long periods of time. Indeed, we
|
||
might even think of spiritual animals as being quite local and
|
||
transient, for that is what is suggested by the notion of individuals
|
||
having a spiritual body, as well as a physical body, to pursue their
|
||
goals. (That is, members of spiritual animals can be said to have
|
||
spiritual bodies, because they can enlist friends and occupants of
|
||
social roles to cooperate in the attainment of their individual
|
||
goals, as a local and limited way of generating social level
|
||
behavior.) </font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">But the
|
||
essential nature of spiritual animals can be seen most clearly from
|
||
their place in the stages of evolution, and that suggests the
|
||
capacity of spiritual animals to control all the conditions that
|
||
affect their reproduction is as important as their capacity to act as
|
||
a whole. The power that is maximized by reproductive causation is
|
||
holistic, and so the natural perfection that determines what is good
|
||
for them has to do with the unit that has the final authority to act
|
||
in every way for the members, that is, the government. It is in the
|
||
state, therefore, that the spiritual animal exists most completely.</font></font></p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 1.27cm; margin-right: 2.54cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">Pre-Socratic
|
||
philosophy began about 600BC when Thales argued that everything is
|
||
water. As we should expect, it began with a dissatisfaction about
|
||
religious explanations. The Pre-Socratic philosophers did not want an
|
||
explanation by the motives or actions of gods, spirits, or any other
|
||
unseen beings with a nature like their own. Instead, they were
|
||
looking for another kind of cause, the simplest assumption needed to
|
||
explain nature. They called it the <i>archê, </i>which is variously
|
||
translated as “first principle”, “beginning”, “origin of
|
||
things”, or simply “first”. </font></font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">At
|
||
the beginning, the ontological way of providing an <i>archê</i> was
|
||
at least as obvious as the epistemological. It is clear that what
|
||
most of the Pre-Socratics were seeking as an <i>archê</i> was the
|
||
substance that would explain everything in the world, and everything
|
||
about the natural world, including change and diversity. They tried
|
||
out various conceptions of material substance and various ways in
|
||
which such an <i>archê</i> could explain nature. </font></font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">Thales’
|
||
theory that the basic substance is water gave rises to other views
|
||
during the first phase involving the Ionian pre-Socratics.
|
||
Anaximander held that the basic substance was the <i>apeiron</i>, or
|
||
the “unlimited, suggesting that substance is substratum in which
|
||
opposite properties compete to occupy, as if it were a disputed
|
||
territory. Anaximines argued that it is air, because then
|
||
condensation and rarification could explain the change in properties
|
||
and the diversity of kinds of substances.</font></font></p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">Their
|
||
attempts to explain the natural world by material substance makes it
|
||
clear that the Ionians were giving an ontological explanation of the
|
||
world, but another strain of Pre-Socratic philosophy explored the
|
||
epistemological alternative, at least, in a primitive way. The
|
||
Pythagorean philosophers responded to Ionian philosophy by trying to
|
||
explain the natural world as constituted, not by material substances,
|
||
but by numbers. Numbers are the concepts established in imagination
|
||
with the evolution of the behavioral schemata for counting (because
|
||
the same covert behavior of assigning one word in the unchanging
|
||
sequence of words for each object would work regardless of the kinds
|
||
of objects being counted). Numbers as abstract entities are known
|
||
through reflective understanding, not naturalistic understanding,
|
||
because they are units in the linguistic structure of the spiritual
|
||
animal under its cultural aspect, and the peculiar nature of the
|
||
knowledge we can have about numbers was part of the mystical
|
||
ceremonies on which Pythagoreans based a religion. In any case, they
|
||
took an object known by reflective understanding to be the first
|
||
cause underlying the world, though numbers were associated with
|
||
geometrical structures as a way of showing how they could explain
|
||
natural phenomena. </font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">In
|
||
a second phase of pre-Socratic philosophy, problems about the nature
|
||
of ontological explanation emerged in the form of a dilemma acted out
|
||
in the choice between Parmenides and Heraclitus.</font></font></font></p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">Parmenides
|
||
argued that, if the world is to be explained by a single substance,
|
||
change must be an illusion. As he put it, “What is, must be, and
|
||
what is not, must not be.” This is a way of describing the temporal
|
||
nature of substance, that is, as a self-subsistent entity that can
|
||
neither come into existence nor go out of existence, but is
|
||
permanent. That Ionians assumed that the <i>archê</i> is a single
|
||
substance, and Parmenides was pointing out that, if so, there can be
|
||
no change, because there is nothing in the world to come into
|
||
existence or to go out of existence over time. Thus, he insisted that
|
||
what exists is the One, or Being, and he conceived of its as an
|
||
unchanging sphere of matter, for he realized that for any parts of it
|
||
to be separated from any other parts, there would have to be
|
||
something else that exists between them. </font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">What seems
|
||
to come into existence and go out of existence over time are
|
||
properties, and Heraclitus explored the other horn of this dilemma.
|
||
He also accepted the Ionian assumption that what explains the world
|
||
is a single, first principle, but instead of taking it to be
|
||
substance, Heraclitus took it to be change itself, that is, the
|
||
coming and going of properties from existence. He called it “fire,”
|
||
but his paradoxical pronouncements about the <i>archê</i> make it
|
||
clear that fire was just a symbol for the changing properties that we
|
||
perceive in nature. He said, for example, that one could, and could
|
||
not, step in the same river twice. One can step in the same river
|
||
twice, because things do seem to be permanent. Change is regular,
|
||
being governed by Logos (or natural laws of some kind). At the same
|
||
time, one cannot step in the same river twice, because the water
|
||
constantly changes as it flows. The river is probably a metaphor for
|
||
objects of any kind. Permanence is an illusion, because objects that
|
||
seem to be unchanging are actually just a flow of properties, each
|
||
existing only at the moment. That is, Heraclitus would insist that
|
||
you cannot even stand on the same river bank twice. </font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">An inherent
|
||
defect in the very nature of the Ionian explanation was surfaced by
|
||
the dilemma that Parmenides and Heraclitus posed. The Ionians
|
||
explicitly wanted to explain the change and diversity in the natural
|
||
world by an <i>archê,</i> a single, first principle. But if that
|
||
<i>archê</i> is substance, then nothing exists to explain the change
|
||
and diversity. And if change itself is the <i>archê</i>, then there
|
||
is no substance. (There is nothing but transient, changing
|
||
properties.)</font></font></p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">A
|
||
third phase of pre-Socratic philosophy discovered what was required
|
||
for ontology to be explanatory. The solution to the dilemma was to
|
||
postulate more than one kind of basic substance and explain change
|
||
and diversity by different combinations of those substances, though
|
||
there was a disagreement about how many basic substances there are. </font></font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">Empedocles
|
||
postulated four kinds of substances, earth, air, fire and water, and
|
||
since these “element” were assumed to have different kinds of
|
||
properties, it seemed that the change observed in objects could be
|
||
explained by their mixture and separation. And different kinds of
|
||
object could be explained by different proportions of the basic
|
||
elements constituting them. Though Empedocles just assumed that his
|
||
elements were able to move in the ways required to mix and separate,
|
||
he explained why they mix and separate in the regular ways they do by
|
||
postulating two forces, love and strife. Love drew different kinds of
|
||
elements to one another, mixing them, and strife repelled them from
|
||
one another, separating them. </font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">Anaxagoras
|
||
insisted that there are infinitely many different kinds of basic
|
||
substances, or what he called “seeds,” and infinitely many seeds
|
||
combined in each observable object. He explained change and diversity
|
||
in the same way as Empedocles, and the difficulty of explaining the
|
||
enormous range of the diversity and different kinds of change without
|
||
only four substances that led Anaxagoras to increase the number of
|
||
basic substances so profligately. In any case, he recognized that
|
||
this mode of explanation required him to postulate a force to explain
|
||
why change takes place the way it does, but instead of love and
|
||
strife, he postulated mind (<i>nous</i>). </font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">The need to
|
||
postulate infinitely many different basic substances to explain what
|
||
is perceived in nature all but renounced the Ionian attempt to find
|
||
an <i>archê,</i> a first principle, but other problems with this
|
||
kind of explanation were also pointed out by Zeno, a student of
|
||
Parmenides. One reason for holding that the parts of ordinary
|
||
observable objects are infinite is that they are always divisible.
|
||
But Zeno pointed out that an object of finite size cannot be made up
|
||
of parts that are infinitely small parts (like Anaxagoras’ seeds),
|
||
no matter how many such parts there are. And if the parts have finite
|
||
sizes, there cannot be infinitely many of them. Furthermore, there
|
||
were problems with the basic mechanism of change presupposed by both
|
||
Empedocles and Anaxagoras, because they must assume that the basic
|
||
substances can move in order to explain how they mix and separate.
|
||
The basic problem is that motion must be made up of momentary parts,
|
||
but if there is no motion at each moment, there is a similar problem
|
||
about how all the moments can constitute motion.</font></font></p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">In
|
||
the final phase of pre-Socratic philosophy, the attempt to solve
|
||
these problems led to the discovery of the best ontological
|
||
explanation of the natural world. All the change and diversity in the
|
||
world could be explained much more simply by postulating just two
|
||
kinds of opposite elements, or substances. </font></font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">Leucippus
|
||
and, his student, Democritus argued that the natural world is made up
|
||
of atoms and the void. The atoms were bits of matter with infinitely
|
||
many different sizes and shapes, and though scholarship is divided on
|
||
this point, they could have believed that the void is an opposite
|
||
kind of substance that contained them. They insisted that both
|
||
elements must be postulated in order to explain motion, because
|
||
without the void, there would be no room for atoms to move. And if
|
||
atoms can move, then everything that happens can be explained as
|
||
simply the result of how their geometrical structures interact with
|
||
one another, for example, like a hook and an eye to bind with one
|
||
another (that is, structural causation).</font></font></p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">(Many
|
||
scholars hold that the ancient atomists did not believe that the void
|
||
was supposed to be a substance that exists everywhere and coincides
|
||
with the atoms where they are located. Instead, they insist, the void
|
||
was assumed to exist only at those locations where atoms do not
|
||
exist. That is, however, to treat the void as a very subtle kind of
|
||
material substance that can flow around atoms as they move. That
|
||
makes atomism more like what is later called “plenum theories,”
|
||
which deny that there is any void. Furthermore, that interpretation
|
||
makes it hard to see how the ancient atomists could think that the
|
||
void explains how motion (and, therefore, change) is possible.</font></font></p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">Atomism
|
||
gave rise to another problem, however, which made it incredible. It
|
||
replaced material substances whose essential natures were defined by
|
||
qualitative properties, such as hot and cold, dry and wet, and
|
||
various colors, with material substances whose essential natures were
|
||
defined by their geometrical structures. That was attractive, because
|
||
it was possible to explain change as determined necessarily by the
|
||
motion and interaction of atoms, avoiding the need to postulate other
|
||
forces, such as love and strife. But it required some explanation to
|
||
be given of the qualitative properties that objects appear to have,
|
||
and there was no plausible alternative to recognizing that they
|
||
depend on the subject, or as Democritus put it, they are “by
|
||
convention.” Thus, atomists gave up naïve (or direct) realism
|
||
about perception in favor of critical realism. But that merely
|
||
underlined the need for an explanation of the nature of the subjects
|
||
who know about the world. Though Democritus insisted that the motion
|
||
and interaction of atoms in the void explains the capacity for
|
||
reason, by which subjects can recognize the necessity about what
|
||
happens in a world, but his way of explaining reason was to hold that
|
||
there are special, spherical atoms in the brain. Spherical atoms are
|
||
as incapable of explaining these appearances as they are unable to
|
||
explain the capacity to understand necessity in the natural world.</font></font></p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" align="left" style="margin-left: 1.27cm; margin-right: 2.54cm; text-indent: 0cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">Even
|
||
though Pre-Socratic philosophy discovered the nature of substance,
|
||
recognized how substance could explain the world, and even discovered
|
||
that spatiomaterialism is the best ontological-cause explanation of
|
||
the world, it did not establish ontology as a way of doing
|
||
philosophy. It did provide a model for the attempt to construct
|
||
arguments with a higher level of forensic organization than rational
|
||
level culture, for it not only rejected religious explanations, but
|
||
also found a kind of explanation that could promise, at least, to
|
||
explain everything in the world in the same way. But such a complete
|
||
explanation must also explain the existence and nature of beings who
|
||
are able to understand the first level arguments of rational culture.
|
||
Though Democritus’ theory about spherical atoms can be seen as
|
||
pointing to neurological mechanism, it is a far cry from explaining
|
||
how nothing but the motion and interaction of atoms in the void is
|
||
able to understand the motion and interaction of atoms in the void.
|
||
And though Democritus gave a plausible explanation of goodness on the
|
||
assumption that pleasure is the ultimate aim of all behavior, that
|
||
did not explain goodness in the way Socrates wanted, and in any case,
|
||
talk about pleasure merely focused attention of his lack of an
|
||
adequate explanation of the qualitative aspect of experience (that
|
||
is, consciousness). But ontological philosophy could not do better
|
||
than Democritus until the evolution of natural science, when the
|
||
discovery of the details about how “atoms” move and interact at
|
||
the micro level made it possible to trace out the course of evolution
|
||
and discover how the brain works. </font></font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
</body>
|
||
</html>
|