Bullshit scholarship – Escaping from Bullshit

The Naive Views of Yuval Harari in Home Deus – First Criticism

The most egregious naive view of Harari is his view of ethics as a prescription to do whatever feels good. But I will put off a criticism of this for later. Here I want to say something about the title of his book: Homo Deus.

I realize that he is using this title for its – let us say – shock value. But though his intent is to argue for the possibility or even probability of enhancing human characteristics, such as physical and mental powers, and even the creation of human-like machines, the title is literally a contradiction in terms. Why? Because of our conception of God and gods. [See C. D. Broad, “The Validity of Belief in a Personal God”] Simply put, the ancient Greeks imagined the gods to be immortal, while humans are not. [See Robert Graves,The Greek Myths]

So, the title of Harari’s book conveys the view that a mortal can become an immortal, which is impossible for the following reason. Anything with parts can be destroyed. God, as conceived in the Jewish, Muslim, and Christian traditions has no parts, while humans do. Only two things can be said to be indestructible: ultimate parts – if there are such – as studied by quantum mechanics. And the universe, if the conservation of energy is true. And this is why for Spinoza the universe is identified with God. Consequently, neither man nor any artificial intelligence can be a Deus.

Review of “The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity” by David Graeber and David Wengrow

I have written six previous commentaries on the book [see below]. And, though I have further commentaries to make, here I want to focus on their claim of being a “new” history.

In which respect is it new?
1. It is new in the sense that it is the most recently published.
2. It is new in the sense that it takes into account the archeological discoveries of the past 50 years or so.
3. It is also new in that it tries to take into account all the anthropological findings.
4. But it also claims to be new in discarding the so-called “dominant view” and the “received wisdom.”

It is this last claim which appears to me to be something like a “straw man.”

Let me explain. A straw man argument is one which targets a fictitious position — a position invented simply for the purpose of refutation. And if one alleges to attribute such a position to a real person, then one is in reality attributing it to a fictitious person — a straw man.

In claiming that some position is the “dominant position” or the “received wisdom”, one is making a sociological claim, a claim which can be supported by a survey or a poll. [I did such a survey in 1998, trying to find out which philosopher was most influential. See: Philosophical Influence — Statistically Determined]

But the authors have not conducted any kind of survey, or named any book or authors; so their claim is simply a dogmatic assertion.

Let us now turn to the formulation of this so-called “dominant view,” “conventiona narrative,” and “received wisdom.”

As far as I can formulate it, it is the the claim that historically there was a series of linear discrete changes from foraging to farming to cities and states. If we use a time line, this historical situation is to be represented by several non-overlapping progressive historical lines. And the authors’ allegedly new position is that the situation should be represented by several overlapping historical lines. Let us call the former the Discrete View; the latter the Overlapping View.

And one of the overlapping lines, according to the authors, should be called by the neologism “play farming.” This is the claim that there was an experimental part-time farming before full-time farming. The claim was made in Chapter 6: Gardents of Adonis.

To be fair to the authors, perhaps they think that although parts of the Overlapping View were widely believed, it was the Discrete View which had to be expressed in a caricaturish manner because of the absence of evidence. [Or, perhaps such a view represents a historical bird’s eye view!] If their view about the lack of evidence is true, then, according to them, the discovery of Catalhoyuk, gives us the first evidence for part of the Overlapping View, i.e., the view that cities and farming existed simultaneously with foraging.

Let me comment on this particular claim. The claim that Catalhoyuk is the first evidence for part of the Overlapping View is not true. Yuval Harari in Sapience (p.85) writes:

The Natufians were hunter-gatherers who subsisted on dozens of wild species, but they lived in permanent villages and devoted much of their time to the intensive gathering and processing of wild cereals. They built stone houses and granaries. They stored grain for times of need. They invented new tools such as stone scythes for harvesting wild wheat, and stone pestles and mortars to grind them.

Being only a bystander in anthropology, I went to Wikipedia to find something more about the Natufian culture. The Natufian culture was named and discovered by Dorothy Garrod in the 1930s. [Incidentally, the only reference to Natufians by Graeber and Wengrow is on p. 246 where they attribute to them only the practice of “curating human crania.”]

Below is a video about the Natufian culture:

Catalhoyuk is dated to c. 9,000 BC; whereas Natufian culture is dated to c. 13,000 BC.

My conclusion is that the dominant belief was and is the Overlapping View, and that the evidence for the Overlapping View preceded the discovery of Catalhoyuk. So, it is puzzling as to what else is “new” in their “new history.”

Previous commentaries:

Commentary by Daniel Bitton on David Graeber and David Wengrow’s book, “The Dawn of Everything”

I have read and watched a few reviews and commentaries of the book, and the best of these so far is the following:

7. The Origins of Male Dominance and Hierarchy; what David Graeber and Jordan Peterson get wrong

10. David Graeber & David Wengrow “The Dawn of Everything” critique: The Wisdom of Kandiaronk

10.1 David Graeber & David Wengrow’s “The Dawn of Everything”: What is an “Egalitarian Society”?

Comment: Daniel Bitton, in his video, claimed that David Graeber either ignored or was ignorant of “immediate return societies.” This is not true. [His comments may only apply to material he has read in Graeber before the present book.] On page 128 of their book, we find the following opening sentence: “The greatest modern authority on hunter-gatherer egalitarianism is by general consent, the British anthropologist James Woodburn.” And they go on to talk about the distinction between “immediate return” and “delayed return” economies. And they go on to conclude: “This might sound like the basis of something hopeful or optimistic. Actually, it’s anything but. What it suggests is, again, that any equality worth the name is essentially impossible for all but the very simplest foragers.” [129] Given this judgment, the question is whether an “equality worth the name” is possible or impossible for a complex(?) or larger (?) society. I suggest that to anwer this question we should take note of the various socialistic experiments which were done in the 19th century in the United States (e.g. Shakers, Rappites, etc.), the anarchistic experiments of Nestor Makhno in Ukraine, the Spanish anarchists (1936-9), and the Zapatistas and Rojava today.

10.2 The Dawn of Everything: How Graeber & Wengrow’s book makes us bad at politics

Comment: Daniel Bitton is too optimistic as to what the Peasant’s Revolt in 1381 could have done, as well as to what the Occupy Movement in 2011 could have done. In the former, they made demands which were returned with rhetorical promises; in the latter, if demands were made, they would have been answered with something like: “we will take your demands into consideration.” In both cases, the uprisings were either crushed or disbanded. And if the so-called “colored revolutions” were the inspiration, all they managed to do is to replace one individual with another. Perhaps the right word for this is “coups,” but I would not call them “revolutions.”

After listening to Daniel Bitton’s criticism of David Graeber, which is to the point and very sensible, I listened to some of his other podcasts on “What is politics?” as well as the following two interviews in which he offers his criticisms of Graeber and his own anthropological views.

#155 Anthropology and Materialism Part 1 w/ Daniel Bitton

Comment: Daniel Bitton mentions a video of an interview with Chris Knight. Here is the video:

Chris Knight – The Anthropology of David Graeber

#156 Anthropology and Materialism Part 2 w/ Daniel Bitton

See also: ‘The Dawn of Everything’ gets human history wrong, Climate & Capitalism, Dec. 17, 2021. This consists of two articles: the first by Chris Knight, “In Fundamental Ways Incoherent and Wrong”; the second by Nancy Lindisfarne and Jonathan Neale, “All Things Being Equal”

Chris Knight, “Wrong About (Almost) Everything,”, FocaalBlog, December 22, 2021.

My sixth commentary on the book: The Dawn of Everything by David Graeber and David Wengrow

On page 426, they write: “Over the course of this book we have had occasion to refer to the three primordial principles of freedom, those which for most of human history were simply assumed: the freedom to move, the freedom to disobey and the freedom to create or transform social relationships.”

Commentary: I have no objection to these freedoms. But I do have an objection to calling them “primordial.” A better approach is provided by Joel Feinberg in the book Social Philosophy, 1973. In the first chapter, “The Concept of Freedom,” he analyzes the concept of freedom as the absence of constraints, and then he distinguished internal from external constraints, on the one hand, and positive from negative constraints, on the other. Thus giving us a fourfold classification with examples:

	Positive Constraint	Negative Constraint
Internal Constraint	headache, obsessive thought, compulsive desires	ignorance, weakness, defieciencies in talent or skill
External Constraint	barred windows, locked doors, pointed bayonets	lack of money, lack of transportation, lack of weapons

If there is to be a primordial principle, it surely should be the freedom to strive to survive. This means the freedom to be a hunter, gatherer, farmer, and pastoralist. And all these freedoms can be summed up as the freedom to use subsistence land.

An internal negative constraint is beautifully illustrated in the film “Walkabout,” in which a young boy and girl are stranded in the Australian outback, and without the fortunate encounter with an Aboriginal youth, they would have died. He has the knowledge and the skills to get food and water which are necessary for survival. Below is a trailer:

My fifth commentary on the book: The Dawn of Everything by David Graeber and David Wengrow

Graeber and Wengrow wrote: “The first thing to emphasize is that the ‘the origin of social inequality’ is not a problem which would have made sense to anyone in the Middle Ages.” p. 14

I find this to be a self-serving claim. If it were true, then the claim that contact with American indigenous people was an eye opener — as the authors claim — becomes credible.

But is it true?

Before the discovery of the New World, there were various peasant disturbances. [See: Popular revolts in late-medieval Europe] What were peasants grumbling about? Since most peasants were illiterate, we have to go by what they did and by reports of what they said they did. But we can do better by following the sequence of events following the Black Death (1346-1353), in which about a third of the European population died.

From an economic perspective of supply and demand, the demand for peasants increased while the supply of peasants decreased. The result was a wage inflation for peasants.

Consequently in England King Edward III in 1349 passed the Ordinance of Labourers, and Parliament in 1351 passed the Statue of Labourers. These laws made work compulsory, and set controls on wages and the price of goods.

In 1381, the discontent with the prevailing state of affairs burst forth as the English Peasants’ Revolt.

We may take the sermon of the priest John Ball (preaching at Blackheath in 1381) as expressing the sentiments of the peasants.

“When Adam delved and Eve span,[a] Who was then the gentleman? From the beginning all men by nature were created alike, and our bondage or servitude came in by the unjust oppression of naughty[b] men. For if God would have had any bondmen from the beginning, He would have appointed who should be bond, and who free. And therefore I exhort you to consider that now the time is come, appointed to us by God, in which ye may (if ye will) cast off the yoke of bondage, and recover liberty.” [a. Delved meaning dug the fields, and span meaning spun fabric (or flax). b. “Naughty” then having a stronger sense of “evil, malicious”.]

And here we have an expression of a grievance against inequality, which contradicts the claim of Graeber and Wengrow that no one in the Middle Ages would or could make sense of the problem of inequality.

My fourth commentary on the book: The Dawn of Everything by David Graeber and David Wengrow

In my second commentary I had faulted the book for ignoring the work of Herman Nieboer’s Slavery as an Industrial System (2d ed. 1910). Graeber and Wengrow tell us where they find the existence of slavery, but they do not bother to explain why it exists. Here I would like to mention the conclusions of Nieboer.

Nieboer starts out by defining slavery, and then through a systematic examination of the available ethnographic reports of the life of indigenous people he looked for any correlations between the holding of slaves and ways of securing subsistence.

I am not going to exposit or explain his conclusions, except to provide you with the following chart which he made of his conclusions.

General recapitulation.

	Furthering the growth of slavery.	Hindering the growth of slavery.
I. Internal causes.
A. General:	1. Open resources and subsistence easy to acquire.	1. Closed resources. 2. Subsistence difficult to acquire.
B. Secondary, economic:	1. A high position of women. 2. Commerce. 3. Preserving of food.	1. Female labour serving as a substitute for slave labour. 2. Subjection of tribes as such.
C. Secondary, non-economic:	1. Militarism (where slaves are employed in warfare). 2. Slaves kept as a luxury.	1. Militarism (especially where foreigners are adopted).
II. External causes:
	1. Fixed habitations. 2. Living in large groups. 3. Preserving of food. 4. The slave-trade. 5. The neighbourhood of inferior races.

“The most important result of our investigation seems to us the division, not only of all savage tribes, but of all peoples of the earth, into peoples with open, and with closed resources.” [p. 418] [Comment: I keep talking about this in terms of a free access to subsistence land.]

In the following paragraphs, he provides some support for Oppenheimer’s theory of State formation.

“In North-East Africa, however, there is one more cause at work, making slavery superfluous. This is the existence of a kind of substitute for slavery, viz. subjection of tribes as such. Pastoral tribes often levy tributes on agricultural tribes, to which they are superior in military strength; the latter cannot easily leave the lands they cultivate and seek a new country; if not too heavily oppressed, they will prefer paying a tribute. And to pastoral nomads the levying of a tax on agricultural tribes brings far more profit than the enslaving of individuals belonging to such tribes, whom they would have to employ either in pastoral labour, which they do not want, or in tilling the soil, which work the nomads would be unable to supervise. There are also pastoral tribes subjected by other pastoral nomads, the latter forming the nobility and the military part of society. Finally we find subjected tribes of hunters, smiths, [277] etc.; here we have sometimes rather to deal with a voluntary division of labour.”

“We see that the difference between the slave-keeping and the other pastoral tribes consists in external circumstances. Pastoral tribes have no strong motives for making slaves, for the use of slave labour is small. On the other hand, there are no causes absolutely preventing them from keeping slaves. These tribes are, so to speak, in a state of equilibrium; a small additional cause on either side turns the balance. One such additional cause is the slave-trade; another is the neighbourhood of inferior races. There may be other small additional causes, peculiar to single tribes. We shall not inquire whether there are, but content ourselves with the foregoing conclusions, of which the principal are these, that the taming of animals does not naturally lead to the taming of men, and that the relation between capital and labour among pastoral tribes renders the economic use of slavery very small. [ 290]

Recapitulating, we may remark that our general theory, that there is no great use for slave labour where subsistence depends on capital, is fully verified by our investigation of economic life among pastoral tribes.

Two secondary internal causes found in the second chapter have been also met with among pastoral tribes: slaves are sometimes employed in warfare, and sometimes for domestic labour to relieve the women of their task. Two new secondary factors have been found in this chapter: slaves are kept as a luxury; and sometimes the subjection of tribes as such, serving as a substitute for slavery, makes slavery proper superfluous.

With regard to the external causes it has been shown that the coercive power of pastoral tribes is not very strong, as they are nomadic and live in rather small groups; but this want is sometimes compensated for by the slave-trade and the neighbourhood of inferior races. The two latter circumstances may therefore rank as new external causes, the slave-trade taking the place of the existence of a homogeneous group. On the Pacific Coast of N. America it is the trade between tribes of the same culture, among pastoral nomads it is the trade with Arabia, etc. ; but in either case it is the slave-trade that furthers the growth of slavery.”

My third commentary on the book: The Dawn of Everything by David Graeber and David Wengrow

Here I would like to answer their question: Why are we stuck?

This is an elliptical question which when expanded is: Why are we stuck with capitalism and a representative democracy?

It is analogous to asking a slave: Why are you stuck in slavery?

My answer is that this state of affairs is the result of conquest, a position which was expounded by two sociologists: Ludwig Gumplowicz (1838-1909) and Franz Oppenheimer (1864-1943).

According to Franz Oppenheimer in his book, The State (1914), nomadic pastoralists can, and do, form hierarchies of dependence because animals can be lost to predators or disease, or some natural disaster. This causes those in distress to depend on the more fortunate and industrious. Herders, in addition, having to maneuver and protect their animals develop athletic skills so that they are indistiguishable from warriors. And as soon as there is any property which can be acquired — either of another herder or a sedentary farmer, this is an incentive to take it by force. And then he lists 6 stages of forcible appropriation. Using the analogy of obtaining honey, he divides these into the method of the bear — whereby the honey is obtained through the destruction of the hive, and the other 5 methods are those of the bee-keeper: taking only the surplus.

“The six stages Oppenheimer describes may be conveniently epitomized as follows: (1) extermination; (2) appropriation of surplus; (3) tribute-giving; (4) occupation; (5) regulation; and (6) amalgamation.” [Chapter XIX: Struggle over “The Struggle for Existence”: Social Darwinism, Pros and Cons, in Howard Becker and Harry Elmer Barnes, Social Thought from Lore to Science, Vol. 2 (1938), p. 726.]

Analogous to land nomads there are also sea nomads, such as pirates and the Vikings.

Oppenheimer stipulates that obtaining the necessities of life by work or free exchange is to be called “the economic means”; whereas anything taken by force is to be called “the political means.”

But really, the anthropological or sociological question of how States originated in prehistory is superfluous, since in historical times it is war, conquest, colonization, and extermination which have propelled us to our present worldwide condition.

I am aware that there are other theories of state formation. These can be classified as coercive and voluntaristic theories. Whatever happened in pre-history, it is clear to me that the historical record is of a coercive type of state formation.

Below are some relevant documents — readily available on the Internet:

Franz Oppenheimer, The State, 1914.
William MacLeod, The Origin of the State, 1924.
Robert H. Lowie, The Origin of the State, 1927.
R. L. Carneiro, “A Theory of the Origin of the State”, Science. vol. 169, 1970: pp. 733–738
Elman Service, Origin of the State and Civilization, 1975.
R. L. Carneiro, “The Circumscription Theory: A Clarification, Amplification, and Reformulation”, Social Evolution & History, 11(2), (2012), 5–30.

My second commentary on the book: The Dawn of Everything by David Graeber and David Wengrow

In my first commentary I posted some videos which can be used to accompany some of the archeological sites discussed in their text. And in their book there are many insightful discussions of various topics. The most important, I think, which the authors emphasize, is that Neolithic humans were just as intelligent and resourceful as we are. And I would add that they — as do present hunter-gatherers — had the kind of working knowledge of resources, fabrications skills, and foraging skills which we city-dwellers can only read and dream about in reference materials.

The other thing which caught my attention was their focus on a concept attributed to Gregory Bateson: “schismogenesis.” This is the tendency of groups to differentiate themselves from other groups. This explains the persistence of groups to identify themselves in their cuisine, clothes, music, traditions, history, and such. And this may be done with a sacrifice in efficiency or what we may call progress.

And I could go on finding all sorts of things to praise in the book. But I, first, want to unburden myself of the criticisms which are festering in my mind.

The first criticism has to do with the origin of the State. This is discussed in Chapter 10: Why the State Has No Origin. Although the authors recognize the definition of a State as “the institution that claims a monopoly on the legitimate use of coercive force within a given territory . . .” p.359 and they recognize that our planet is divided into States; yet, they are waffling about origins. And they are waffling because they did not come to terms with Franz Oppenheimer’s book, The State (1914) — a book which is absent in their bibliography, as is also the book of ethnographical material on which it is based, The History of Mankind (1898) by Friedrich Ratzel. Oppenheimer has a six-stage scenario for the development of our States; whereas our authors speak at best only about tribal chiefs and kings — though they do acknowledge that Aztec and Inca Empires were States.

My first commentary on the book: The Dawn of Everything

A few days ago I purchased the new book by David Graeber and David Wengrow, The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Everything, 2021. Graeber was an anthropologist while Wengrow is an archeologist. And, for me, the book is a revelation of what foragers (hunter/gatherers) have done as revealed by the archeological findings. It is also a book which denies the prevalent narrative that agricultural activity and even the formation of “cities” required a State. In other words, the book argues that much can be accomplished democratically (anarchistically) without a State.

Below is an interview with David Wengrow on Democracy Now! in which he introduces the book:

I am still in the process of reading the book. I have read most of it so far by jumping all over the place. It is over 600 pages long. But I have read enough so far so that I can discern things which I have learned and appreciate, and the things about which I have criticisms, which I will talk about in the future.

As an amateur in most things, to appreciate this book I had to brush-up on how periods of time are named. The Greek word for “stone” is “lithos,” and since the earliest surviving tools of man were made of stone, that period is knows as the Stone Age, which archeologists divides into Paleolithic (Old Stone Age), Mesolithic (Middle Stone Age), and Neolithic (New Stone Age). Based on the kind of material used for tools, the next Age is the Copper Age (Chalcolithic) c. 5000 BC, then the Bronze c. 4000 – 3000 BC, then the Iron Age c. 1200 BC, and the Modern Age, which begins with written records c. 3000 BC. All these periods vary relative to different places.

In this blog I have arranged for you some videos about some of the archeological findings attributed to foragers discussed in the book (in no particular order).

Along the Mississippi Valley there are all sorts of earthen mounds. Among these the outstanding one is at Poverty Point in Louisiana. Below is one video, among many, about Poverty Point.

In Japan, archeologists are studying what they call the “jomon” period from around 1400 to 300 BC. Here is a video of the remarkable find at Sannai Maruyama.

In Ukraine there are “mega-sites” belonging to the “Cucuteni-Tripolye” culture.

The city of Teotihuacan in Mexico is a mystery because it has no evidence of royalty in either buildings or in depictions.

Çatalhöyük: a 9000 year old town in Turkey – Ian Hodder (Stanford University)

Astonishing Revelations at ‘Oldest Temple on Earth’ — Gobekli Tepe

The Mammoth Bone Huts of Mezhirich

In Finnland there are “Giants’ Churches” — Jatinkirkko

Shigir Idol found by a lake in the Ural Mountains

The Calusa of Florida

Introduction to the Indus Valley Civilization

The Social Contract Refurbished

What is it to refurbish some item? Using my computer as an example of refurbishment, I did the following with my computer. The computer’s power supply failed; I replaced it with a 500w Termaltake. I had 2GB of memory; I upgrade to 8GB. My operating system was on a Hard Disk; I switched to an 240 GB Solid State Drive (SSD). In other words, to refurbish is to replace failed parts and to enhance or upgrade other parts.

Instead of starting with some imagined state of nature, I want to start with evolutionary theory and anthropology. From evolutionary theory humans have evolved from some common ancestor with chimps. And since chimps are social so were our ancestors. Moreover, human languages are social products and reflect — to use Wittgenstein’S phrase — a form of life.

Reflecting on anthropological findings, it is reasonable to generalize that humans are tribal animals. As such, they have always lived in a rule-guided manner, which are called customs and mores. And from an external perspective tribal life can be characterized by conformity. If we wish, we can characterize this conformity as tacit or implicit consent. Karl Popper called this state of affairs “tribalism” in a disparaging manner because this form of life, he thought, did not allow for pluralism and criticism. This may very well be true about particular matters, such as religion. But I am sure that there must have been some disagreements about where to go foraging or modes of hunting and with which tools or weapons, and which person was worthy of consultation, or even about which plants to avoid as poisonous or unhealthy.

John Locke, as everyone else, agrees that the primary concern of a normal human being is self-preservation. And self-preservation is better secured within a group. And what preserves life is air, water, food, temperature, and shelter. And as Rousseau put it, whoever wills an end; wills the means. And the means to satisfy the above needs is access to subsistence territory. So, if we wish to use such language, there is a tacit agreement that everyone in the tribe is allowed (is permitted, has a right) to access this subsistence territory. John Locke also stresses the rule that everyone is permitted to take from nature whatever one needs as long as there is as much left for everyone else. But, appealing to anthropological finding, not only is this permitted (a right), but there also prevail customs of gift giving and sharing (or, as Kropotkin put it: “mutual aid.”)

As to interpersonal conduct or morals, intratribal conduct can be summarized by the Christian rule: do unto others as you would them do unto you. Tribes live not merely by a negative rule: No person x is allowed to harm another person y (except for self-defense or the defense of others), but also by a positive rule to be of help to others.

What I have said above captures the meaning of what Rousseau means by a General Will. If the people of a tribe were asked to vote whether all the above is acceptable, they would agree. And such a vote would be the Will of All. The General Will is the set of necessary conditions for the preservation of human life in a social context. But this necessity is a factual matter; not a matter of choice and voting.

In summary, in a previous blog, I described primitive tribes by three characteristics: Anarchism, Socialism, and Communism.

The historical purpose of an appeal to a Social Contract is to justify or legitimize a State. Here the matter was muddled by an ambiguous use of the word “government.” In the sense of appealing to authorities for guidance and decision making, tribes resort to different procedures and persons. So, in this sense they are governed.

But States have a different form of government which is historically, for the most part, centralized in a single individual — though Rome and Sparta vested power in two individuals. So, historically, the Social Contract was a juridical fiction for justifying monarchy.

So, we can view a social contract theory in the following manner. If a State of any sort is to be justified then it would have to arise from the common consent of all the members.

But, in fact, all States are illegitimate because none of them arose by a Social Contract, as David Hume pointed out. States arose by conquest, by force; not by free consent. This is the sociological theory of the State as argued for by Franz Oppenheimer in his book, The State.