Decreasing Violence

Steven Pinker argues in (The Better Angels of our Nature, 2011, Viking) that in the more advanced countries of the world our propensity for violence is decreasing. He gives various reasons to support his argument. One of the main reasons he gives is that since the enlightenment we have become more rational. John Gray writes that Pinker’s conclusion is nonsense; see (Prospect October 2011). Gray believes “the idea that humans can shape their lives by the use of reason is an inheritance from rationalist philosophy that does not sit easily with what we know of the evolution of our mammalian brain”. In this posting I will suggest our increasing ability to use reason effectively provides some limited support for Pinker’s thesis.

Before proceeding I want to make two points clear. Firstly reason is not simply some product of the evolution of our brain. Of course I accept that the capacity to reason is the product of our brain’s evolution nevertheless I still believe reason is not simply a product of the brain. Reason is something our brain’s increasing capacity allowed us to discover. AI does not depend on simply building bigger more intelligent machines. AI depends on the idea that we might build a machine with the capacity to become intelligent by reacting with some environment that is independent of the machine itself. Secondly I accept Hume’s point that reason is the slave of the passions. I would however distinguish between higher and lower passions. For instance fear might be seen as a simple physiological fact whilst resentment would seem to include a cognitive element.

If it is accepted that Hume is correct how can our increasing reason support Pinker’s thesis? Surely our goals are determined by our passions and reason is only instrumental in achieving these goals. Two responses are possible to the above. Firstly a great deal of violence is caused by nations and religions and it might be questioned whether either nations or religions have passions. They may of course encourage passions but this is not the same as actually having passions. Secondly I have suggested there is a difference between higher and lower passions. Higher passions seem to include a cognitive element, include reason. I would further suggest a great deal of large scale violence such as wars and repression is not caused by lower passions such as anger but by higher passions. If my suggestions are accepted then it seems possible that an increase in reason may indeed lower the scale of violence because higher passions contain a cognitive element. Increasing reason may of course do little to reduce domestic violence.

Someone might object the above is just a house of cards. She might point out there is no evidence for our increasing reason. I accept her point. I certainly don’t believe I am any more rational than Plato or that people in general are today more rational than for instance the population of ancient Athens. However my argument does not simply depend on our increased rationality. My argument depends on our increased ability to use reason effectively. This increase is not due to any increase in our brain capacity. As I suggested above simply increasing a computer’s capacity to compute will not make it intelligent. My increased ability is based on an increase in knowledge, on what I take to be true. I am not naturally more rational than Plato however I live in more knowledgeable times enabling me to use the rationality I possess better. I simply know more than Plato.

Might our increasing when reasoning effectively support Pinker’s thesis? It appears that Stephen Hawking would not. He has suggested if aliens are anything like us they are likely to be aggressive and either exterminate us or pillage our resources. It seems safe to assume any aliens, who can cross interstellar space, would have at least as great an ability to reason as us, see my posting of 25/05/10. In that posting I suggested any intelligent creature must feel some empathy. I then argued increasing knowledge naturally leads to increasing empathy because this knowledge forces us to see other people or intelligent creatures as entities that care about things in the same way as we do. I further argued this increasing empathy increases the domain of our empathic concern. If my arguments are accepted it would seem increasing our ability to reason effectively will reduce violence because it increases the domain of our empathic concern. A second reason might be advanced to support Pinker’s thesis. Let it be accepted Hume is correct and that our goals are determined by our emotions. However our increasing knowledge might tell us some goals are unattainable and that we would not appreciate some other goals even if we attained them. It might then be even if our goals are solely determined by our emotions that nevertheless reason determines which of our emotions determine goals. It is then plausible that our increasing ability to reason effectively rules some emotions, which would produce violence, as reasons to act.