Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D.

Lake II (1978).

Here.

Here.

In contrast [to the Davis-Moore model], our own approach is based on the assumption that an individual will be granted high status by the other members of the group fundamentally as an incentive to perform activities personally important to these members themselves (whether for selfish or for unselfish reasons)—quite without regard to the usefulness, unimportance, or even harmfulness of his activities to society at large. Moreover, a social group may grant a person high status as a reward for certain activities having no real value even to the group's own members, so long as these members mistakenly believe that his activities have a real value to them and make real contributions to achieving their own personal objectives. Finally, a person may achieve high social status in a given social group even if most members know perfectly well that his activities are useless or positively harmful to their own interests, so long as at least some powerful individuals in the group assign, rightly or wrongly, high value to his activities from their own personal point of view—or even so long as at least one very powerful individual does so.

In cases where one individual shows deference to another individual, owing to genuine appreciation of his activities, and in order to give him an incentive to continue these activities, we shall speak of incentive deference. On the other hand, in cases where an individual shows deference to another individual merely as a result of social pressure, merely in order to obtain rewards and/or to avoid punishments from other individuals, we shall speak of induced deference.

Our model easily accounts for various empirical facts which do not admit of explanation in terms of the Davis-Moore model, such as the high social status that criminal gangs may grant to members performing valuable services for the gang, even if these services represent highly undesirable criminal activities from the whole society's point of view; or the high status that some social groups may grant to quacks and frauds in the mistaken belief that the latter perform valuable services for them; or the high status that groups dominated by an autocratic leader may grant to people serving the leader's personal interests to the detriment of all other members' interests, and so forth.

Indeed, under our model, high social status may also be achieved as a reward for what may be called mere negative services, consisting of nothing other than merely refraining from certain obnoxious activities. Thus, in a criminal gang a bully may achieve high social status simply by threatening with violence everybody who does not recognize his status claim—which is equivalent to saying that the members of the gang will grant him high social status as an incentive for him to refrain from violence against them. Of course in a sense, a negative service is a useful "service:" the members of the gang will be better off if the bully does not beat them up than if he does. But it is a "service" done in the context of an obnoxious disservice: even if the bully refrains from violence in exchange for status (and possibly other) payoffs, he will only remove an aggressive threat which he himself has imposed in the first place. He is like a hypothetical doctor who would be asking for a reward to cure an illness which he himself had maliciously inflicted on the patient.

Let me add, however, that human societies rather seldom grant social status as a reward for mere "negative services" alone. As we shall see, the reason is that human societies tend to resist status claims based on what they regard as "illegitimate" power; and power based merely on threats of violence or on threats of other disservices is considered to be illegitimate power in most human noncriminal social groups. (But in animal societies, status hierarchies based on a "pecking order," that is, on threats of violence, are very common.)

Yet, even though high social status is seldom achieved solely by an ability to engage in obnoxious activities, such an ability is very often an important contributing factor to a person's high social status in a given social group. More particularly, if a person performs some useful positive services which in themselves by their own intrinsic value would not qualify him for high social status in the relevant group or organization, he may be able nevertheless to achieve high social status if he is in a position to perform important disservices—for instance, if he can cause great damages to this group or organization by negligence, disloyalty, or malice. In most cases the other members of the group will be prepared to grant him high social status and various other positive incentives, just to keep him in a loyal, careful, and cooperative mood (unless they think he will be sufficiently deterred from all uncooperative behavior merely by the penalties attached to it).

(John C. Harsanyi, "A Bargaining Model for Social Status in Informal Groups and Formal Organizations," Behavioral Science 11 [September 1966]: 357-69, at 360-1 [italics in original; boldface added])

Note from KBJ: It's hard to read this passage without thinking of Brian Leiter, whose status within the disciplines of law and philosophy is based on fear of retaliation (by him) toward those who dare criticize him. Leiter parlayed a childish ranking system, which exploits academics' insecurities about their social status, into a money-making enterprise. He uses his conferred status to punish those who disagree with him about law, morality, religion, or politics. This is why I call him an academic thug. I have highlighted (in boldface type) the passages that apply most clearly to Leiter.

Please, Democrats, keep putting Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi on television.

Here is Ann Coulter’s latest column.

In his Jan. 8 op-ed “We don’t need a wall to ensure better border policy,” David Dodson does an excellent job of outlining why the United States needs to adopt a comprehensive reform of immigration laws. However, in doing so, he inadvertently makes the mistake of underplaying the nefarious use that Donald Trump makes of so-called dangerous immigrants among us to rally his base and to frighten Americans about what is happening at the border and in our cities. The use of a targeted group to encourage hatred in a national white-majority population is a well-known maneuver of dictators and totalitarian leaders throughout history.

My chapter in the book “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President” called attention to the similarity of thought patterns found in other totalitarian leaders, such as Hitler and Stalin, and those manifestly obvious in how our president thinks, talks, and tweets. Here I am not attempting to call attention to actions that can be compared with those enacted by Hitler and Stalin; however, this kind of grandiose paranoid thinking in a leader needs to be recognized as disqualifying for someone serving as the president of the United States.

While immigration reform may actually be needed, it is important that it not be allowed to serve as a cover for the president’s attempts to use hatred of immigrants as a means of increasing the influence of his antidemocratic thinking and leadership.

Dr. Henry J. Friedman

Cambridge

The writer is an associate professor of psychiatry, part time, at Harvard Medical School.

Just left a meeting with Chuck and Nancy, a total waste of time. I asked what is going to happen in 30 days if I quickly open things up, are you going to approve Border Security which includes a Wall or Steel Barrier? Nancy said, NO. I said bye-bye, nothing else works!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 9, 2019

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Moral arguments for theism were put forward before Kant asserted the primacy of the practical reason; but they generally held a subsidiary place. From Kant's day to our own they have occupied a dominant position in theistic systems. It is fitting, therefore, to begin an examination of them by recalling the more enduring part of the line of reasoning which led Kant to conclude that the deliverances of our moral faculty afford satisfactory ground for belief in a Divine Being. More than this Kant did not claim to have shewn: he did not intend to provide a theistic proof. He merely argues that God, a regulative idea for the theoretical reason, is a postulate for the practical reason: if the moral order of the world (as Kant conceived it) is to stand, and what ought to be is to be, God must exist.

(F. R. Tennant, Philosophical Theology, vol. 2, The World, the Soul, and God [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1930], 96 [italics in original])