Bertrand Russell understood that a ramified Type theory could get rid of impredicativity based paradoxes but this also led him to hold an absurd view- viz that colonial wars were justified because the colonizer belonged to a higher type-“in order that such wars may be justified, it is necessary that there should be a very great and undeniable difference between the civilization of the colonizers and that of the dispossessed natives”
The problem here is that whichever civilization colonizes the other is bound to become superior. Furthermore, a civilization which can't defend itself against attack is less fit, and thus inferior, to its conqueror. Thus, consequentialism of Russell's type must endorse any and every war of conquest which appreciably diminishes the living standards of the conquered and thus results in a civilizational gap.
The 'workaround' is graph-theoretic or categorical. Essentially, one could compare the civilizational level attainable by conquest to that which would obtain, as its adjoint, by some other less coercive type of interaction. Here a 'universal' is linked to an optimization problem. Only after both adjoint functors are calculated can the thing be given a game-theoretical representation as an Expected utility pay-off matrix. The owl of Minerva flies by night with a vengeance.
Is deontology a better approach? No. The fault of akribeia arises and so either 'equitable' exceptions are ubiquitous or the thing can be gamed and is dangerous to the party relying on it.
Russell genuflected to deontology by endorsing 'wars of principle'. The problem here is that since, in his view, a type of conquest which diminishes the civilizational rank of the 'dispossessed natives' is justified, it follows that 'fuck over them bastids and make them lick our boots' is a principle which justifies any war provided it is rapacious.
A consequentialist ethics can only take cognizance of outcomes not the principles which bring them about. Russell may himself have been '“honestly convinced that the progress of mankind depends upon the adoption of certain beliefs or institutions” but, speaking honestly, he had shit for brains. That's the problem with principles. Shitty people may have them. Sensible people might prefer to approach things with an open mind and act not on the basis of pre-conceived notions but on what they can see is most efficacious and conducive to the commonweal.
Russell was skeptical of 'wars of self defense'- e.g. Britain going to war over the violation of Belgian neutrality on the grounds that a hostile power could cross the Channel and thus it was better to fight on European soil rather than on the beaches and landing grounds of the home island. Russell says “the justification of wars of self-defence is very convenient, since so far as I know there has never yet been a war which was not one of self-defence”. Russell was wrong. The Crimean War did not involve any threat to the UK. Both the First and Second World War did. This may not have been obvious to that cretin in 1915 but it was obvious to everybody after Dunkirk. Even Russell supported the Second War though Britain entered it for the same reason- viz. that German domination of Europe would mean the threat of exactly the sort of invasion that Napoleon, or centuries previously, the Spanish Armada contemplated.
Lastly we come to 'wars of prestige'. The French scholar, Olivier Esteves has written- Lastly, “wars of prestige” are dismissed as unjustifiable : the ongoing war, which was primarily about the “hegemony of the Balkans […] is entirely a question of prestige”.
This is nonsense. The Great war, for the UK, was primarily about honoring treaty commitments. Failure to do so would mean that Britain might have to fight alone against a Europe united under a foreign despot. Moreover, having failed to keep to a treaty once, Britain might not be trusted by potential allies going forward.
Prestige does matter when it comes to treaties designed to preserve peace by maintaining the credibility of a coalition in balance of power calculations. In other words, prestige is game theoretic and its maintenance is a cheap way to prevent large scale conflict of an uncontrolled type.
Russell associates such conflicts with the nations’ desire for triumph,
as opposed to what? Its desire for enslavement?
and the fear of humiliation
which might as easily happen if the King Emperor shat himself while asking the Kaiser to pull his finger
at the hands of our enemies.
Whereas we'd have no objection to our friends beating and sodomizing us- right?
He then expresses the hope that, much like individuals in Anglo-Saxon countries have abandoned the practise of duelling and dismissed it as a “folly and delusion”,
because the alternative was having to employ bravos to beat any kill impudent knaves who might challenge one to a duel to the death. The Anglo Saxons preferred to sue each other in the courts and thus triumph over their slanderers by sending them to the poor house.
the honour of nations will not “be measured by their willingness to inflict slaughter”.
But no nation was honoured at that time simply because its inhabitants wanted to kill and eat everybody else.
In more metaphorical terms, he declares, in “War and Non-Resistance” (August 1915, The Atlantic Monthly), that “we should have put Shakespeare on the Nelson Monument,
but Nelson himself might have wanted some stirring line of Shakespeare's on that monument. He was one of a happy few, a band of brothers, who shed their blood far from home so naught but the dew drop atremble upon the red garden rose remind a mother or a sweetheart of what had been spilled from hearts of oak.
By contrast, Shakespeare would have recoiled from the notion that a mere scribbler be raised above that most gallant of sailors who had staved off the Napoleonic Tempest from his natal shore.
and given Apsley House to Darwin.
Why? Wellington paid for it himself. Perhaps the cretin was thinking of Blenheim.
But the citizens that every nation honours most are those who have killed the greatest number of foreigners”.
Very true. Victoria became Queen because of her insatiable appetite for the scalps of foreigners. Cardinal Newman too was notorious for skulking around the docks seeking for foreign sailors whom he swiftly strangled with his rosary.
National honour is not negative per se: it is to be sought for in artistic or scientific terms (corresponding to what he calls “creative impulses” in Principles of Social Reconstruction) whereas it is to be dismissed as destructive in military or imperialistic fields (corresponding to what he calls “possessive impulses”).
But creative impulses create the sorts of things people want to possess. Without creativity everybody would have only the same sort of crude and ugly tools and garments.
This war is not being fought for any rational end:
It was fought because Germany violated Belgian neutrality. It is rational to honor treaty commitments. By contrast, Russell's opposition to the war was irrational. It was based on some inchoate fear of 'barbarism' based, ultimately, on the notion that working people may suddenly go mad and start stabbing all and sundry. Russell could not understand that it was rational for the Brits to show enthusiasm for the war because this raised morale and increased the ability of the Government to mobilize resources for the war effort.
it is being fought because, at first, the nations wished to fight,
Germany wished to fight because it thought it could win. Moreover it believed that if it delayed, its enemies would get stronger and thus it would lose its chance. France did not have an offensive doctrine which would have required fundamental changes with a political dimension. Instead it had a stupid 'attaque a outrance' doctrine which simply meant hurling oneself at the enemy screaming wildly. The result was that the cream of the French army was mown down by second rate German divisions whose artillery had a longer range.
and now they are angry and determined to win victory.
as opposed to being bored and whimsically inclined to defeat
Everything else is idle talk,
like Russell's
artificial rationalizing of instinctive actions and passions.
But instinctive actions and passions represent 'Darwinian algorithms of the mind'. They are game theoretic whereas Russell's perorations were simply stupid and ignorant.
When two dogs fight in the street, no one supposes that anything but instinct prompts them, or that they are inspired by high and noble ends.
Nonsense! A dog may be defending its mistress when it fights a bigger dog which wants to take a bite out of her leg. We consider a dog of this sort to be noble. The fact is, the dog is man's best friend precisely because of complementary instincts related to pack behavior and territoriality which are perfectly rational albeit explainable to a Mathematician only in game theoretic terms. Sadly, by the time Von Neumann formulated this type of theory, Russell was too old to see the light. Hence his ignorant adhesion to CND.
But if they were capable of what is called thought, if they had been taught that Dog is a rational animal, we may be sure that a superstructure of belief would grow up in them during the combat. They fight really because something angers them in each other’s smell.
Russell was simply wrong. Pheromones have nothing to do with hostility between dogs or, indeed, humans. If hierarchal positions reflect 'Shapley values' of some kind, there is no fighting. The thing is a discovery process.
But if their fighting were accompanied by intellectual activity, the one would say he was fighting to promote the right kind of smell (Kultur), and the other to uphold the inherent canine right of running on the pavement (democracy).
Nonsense! This dog would say 'that dog is a threat to my master or else is looking covetously upon my squeaky toy', while the other would explain that the pugnacious young pup had been impudent and violated recognized principles of canine hierarchy.
But territoriality is something understood by all animals which require them to preserve a patch of land for their own use so as to survive. This is the 'bourgeois strategy' in hawk-dove.
Yet this would not prevent the bystanders from seeing that their action was foolish, and that they ought to be parted as soon as possible.
Which is one reason why it is safe for smaller dogs to get into such fights. They can demonstrate their loyalty and pugnaciousness without dying for it.
And what is true of dogs in the street is equally true of nations in the present war.
Coz Russell was actually Superman and could pick up the Kaiser with one hand while shaking some sense into the King Emperor with the other.
Mahatma Gandhi acted as a recruiting sergeant during the First World War. Russell, however, was propounding the foolish doctrine Gandhi found it expedient to use during the Second.
Esteves writes-
No. There would have been many killings, many more rapes and lots of lots of transfer of movable and immovable property. German generals would have been the new Dukes and Earls and taken over all the castles and mansions. They may have brought in their own personal servants while the native population laboured under the lash. Teutonic ascendancy in England would have been at least as bad for the indigenous population as English ascendancy in Ireland.
Why was Russell writing this nonsense? Esteves explains that he was dependent on Quaker money to promote his cause (and his own name). But Russell was no friend of the Society of Friends. He thought they were about as usefully employed as if they had sent a delegation to Etna to ask it not to erupt. He didn't get that Quakers get a reputational benefit- useful to them in Trade- by sticking to the principles of their silly religion. Russell, by contrast, was merely demonstrating the uselessness of academic philosophy- even of a mathematical kind. Still, by jumping on the Bolshevik bandwagon, he could have salvaged his reputation- but only if the Bolsheviks hadn't turned out to be as evil as shit. Still, there was a brief moment when Russell could imagine himself the leader of a London Soviet!
After America joined the war, Russell wrote of how American garrisons might be used in Britain to break strikes and (though he did not say this) hold down British work-men while gigantic negroes with ginormous dongs sodomized them incessantly. The government then jailed Russell for publishing a 'statement likely to prejudice His Majesty’s relations with a foreign power' no doubt because Russell had neglected to mention ginormous black cocks which might have promoted, rather than prejudiced, the King Emperor's relations with numerous foreign powers.
Suppose Russell had understood game theory, could he have been less foolish in his political views? No. He was merely selling what he was in a position to sell. That didn't involve being smart. It involved being silly. Consider his famous denunciation of nuclear brinksmanship-
Since the nuclear stalemate became apparent, the Governments of East and West have adopted the policy which Mr. Dulles calls ‘brinkmanship’. This is a policy adapted from a sport which, I am told, is practised by some youthful degenerates. This sport is called ‘Chicken!’. It is played by choosing a long straight road with a white line down the middle and starting two very fast cars towards each other from opposite ends. Each car is expected to keep the wheels of one side on the white line. As they approach each other, mutual destruction becomes more and more imminent. If one of them swerves from the white line before the other, the other, as he passes, shouts ‘Chicken!’, and the one who has swerved becomes an object of contempt. As played by irresponsible boys, this game is considered decadent and immoral, though only the lives of the players are risked. But when the game is played by eminent statesmen, who risk not only their own lives but those of many hundreds of millions of human beings, it is thought on both sides that the statesmen on one side are displaying a high degree of wisdom and courage, and only the statesmen on the other side are reprehensible.Other things being equal, the winner of 'chicken' is the same as the winner of 'hawk dove'- i.e. the one with an uncorrelated asymmetry dictating a 'bourgeois strategy'. Thus the guy who is defending his own turf, or is genuinely in love with the girl, or the one who gains economically from his 'rep'- wins the game while the other says 'well, he was defending his own. I was just testing him to see if he was a stand up guy useful for me to associate with'.
As a matter of fact, within a couple of years, the Cuba crisis showed that 'brinksmanship' worked. However, behind the scenes you had Wohlsetter and Kahn (Dr. Stragelove) etc. updating Eisenhowerian doctrine on a game theoretic basis such that second strike capability and Permissive Activation Linkage etc. became standard on both sides. This in turn took the thymotic aspect out of nuclear doctrine and permitted rapid progress under SALT. Eventually, the US paid the Russians to decommission a lot of their weapons and thus the whole thing ended peacefully.
Russell's utilitarianism was foolish because it did not engage with Knightian uncertainty and strategic considerations related to uncorrelated asymmetries and public (Aumann type) signals. But such a utilitarianism would have to accept ontologicially dysphoric goods. It would cease to have an associated calculus or metric because the configuration space would not be connected. Still, for virtue signalling purposes, that stupid shite was good enough because virtue signalling is nothing but stupid shite.
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