Steve Watson

A group is essentially an organization of individuals in pursuit of their common interests.

1. Each individual has an interest
2. That interest is advanced by group action
3. An organization exists to coordinate the actions of members in pursuit of that interest

Interests and Satisfaction

Let I(x) = {i₁, …, i_n} be the Interests of the individual x. These may be financial, cultural, social, psychological, etc.

Let I(G) = ∪_x∈|G| I(x)

• Interests may include ‘needs’ such as food, sex, etc. (Refer to Maslow’s hierarchy for one of many analyses that make the distinction negligible.)
• It is unclear as yet what level of specification is appropriate for sociological analysis. (It is not obvious, for example, whether or not a very specific interest of an individual should be listed as such or subsumed as a part of a more general interest.)

Let S_j(c, j, x) be a Partial Satisfaction Function measuring the satisfaction of the interest j∈I(x), where c is the set of relevant parameters describing the social context of x.

• Each partial satisfaction function, S_j, will be specific to the particular relevant interest, j. We may without ambiguity write the partial function S_j(c, j, x) as S(c, j, x) (and we may also omit both c and x when these are understood.)
• c is the Context. It is possible to see this as the total social context independent of x, but the relevant parameters are only those that feature in the function S, and this will be a very restricted set of all possible parameters.
• The input to a satisfaction function for a financial interest is easily quantified wrt monetary recompense, but other interests have less obvious inputs. What, for example is the proper measure of social interests such as having healthy friendships? And in either case, how do we determine a degree of satisfaction with the inputs. I suspect this will remain a purely notional function. In that case, the problem of specification is only significant if there is in principle no way to make sense of it.
• As a psychological factor of the agents involved, it’s reasonable to assume that there is a maximum degree of satisfaction that can be achieved for any interest. Therefore we can make the range of each S identical to the interval (0, 1).

Let TS(c, I(x), x) = w_i1(x)S(c, i₁, x) + … + w_in(x)S(c, i_n, x) be a measure of the Total Satisfaction of x, where w_ij(x) are weights representing the relative significance to x of the interests involved.

• TS(c, I(x), x) = ∑_j∈I(x)w_j(x)S(c, j, x) is a briefer way to write the satisfaction function.
• Each w_j(x) is the Weight of Interest for the interest j for x.
• For reasons as before, let the range of TS be (0, 1).

Organizations and Roles

Let O(G) = {r₁, …, r_n} ⊂ 2^|G| stand for the Organization of G.

• We call the elements of O(G) the Roles of the organization of G.
• (∀x ∈ |G|)(&exists;r ∈ O(G)) [x ∈ r]. Every member has a role – or, perhaps, if x has a role in the group organization, then x is a member of the group (though this would require a modification of the definition of O(G).)
• (∀x ∈ |G|)(∀r_i, r_j ∈ O(G)) [x ∈ r_i & x ∈ r_j → r_i = r_j]. Each member has just one role.
• There may be a use for a subset of 2^2|G| too. Consider the case where we wish to speak of the management of a company being the upper echelons of the financial, operational, etc. sectors of the company; or the heads of departments being a special organizational set within the company. For the purposes of simplicity, let us for now disregard this possibility.

The effect of group membership is to modify the satisfaction function. Suppose that the group is generally believed to particularly advance the interest j for its members; then j will be considered an Intentional Interest of the group. The assumption will be that:

(∀xx) [S(c|_xx∈|G|, j, x) > S(c|_xx∉|G|, j, x)]

If membership in fact tends to raise the satisfaction function wrt the interest j of group members then j may be considered an Extensional Interest of the group.

• Note that a group may have several intentional and extensional interests.
• Note that these interests have little to do with the supposed function for which the group exists. A corporation manufacturing widgets, considered as a group, does not primarily satisfy the interest in widgets of its members. Their interests lie elsewhere. Similarly for employees of the Department of Social Welfare, or for Members of Parliament, or for the armed forces, or for any number of other defined function groups.

Interests will be differentially advanced for group members depending on their organizational roles.

• We ought not to assume that (∀x,x ∈ r ∈ O(G)) (∀j ∈ I(G)) [S(c, j, x) = S(c, j, y)], which is the claim that all role members have the same satisfaction function, because x,x ∈ r ∈ O(G) are also likely to be in different roles of another group, or are in different other groups entirely. We need to consider the satisfaction due to G or r – the contribution that membership in a particular role in G makes to the satisfaction of x. To claim that for elements in the same role in G the satisfaction due to G is identical we can say:
  (∀x,x ∈ r ∈ O(G)) (∀j ∈ I(G)) [(S(c|_xx∈r, j, x) – S(c|_xx∉r, j, x)) = (S(c|_yx∈r, j, y) – S(c|_xy∉r, j, y))]
• As a matter of convenience, let S(c|_xx∈r, j, x) for r ∈ O(G) be written S(c, j, r)
• In order to minimize complexity, we will assume membership in just one group until it becomes necessary to do otherwise.

Within a group, therefore, we can define different intentional and extensional interests for the roles in the organization.

• The generally held expectation (of whatever reference group) that interest j will be advanced by membership of role r makes j an Intentional Interest of that role.
• If membership in fact tends to raise the satisfaction function wrt the interest j of members of role r, then j may be considered an Intentional Interest of that role.

Seeming public apathy over climate change is often attributed to a deficit in comprehension. The public knows too little science, it is claimed, to understand the evidence or avoid being misled1. Widespread limits on technical reasoning aggravate the problem by forcing citizens to use unreliable cognitive heuristics to assess risk2. We conducted a study to test this account and found no support for it. Members of the public with the highest degrees of science literacy and technical reasoning capacity were not the most concerned about climate change. Rather, they [the most scientifically and technically competent] were the ones among whom cultural polarization was greatest. This result suggests that public divisions over climate change stem not from the public’s incomprehension of science but from a distinctive conflict of interest: between the personal interest individuals have in forming beliefs in line with those held by others with whom they share close ties and the collective one they all share in making use of the best available science to promote common welfare.

Their conclusion is, of course, that those who are more scientifically literate are using their ability to deal with scientific material ‘dishonestly’ to justify positions that are culturally convenient for them to hold.

A long-established body of work examining motivated cognition supports this conjecture. Both to avoid dissonance and to secure their group standing, individuals unconsciously seek out and credit information supportive of “self-defining… values [and] attitudes”, such as the shared world-views featured in the study of cultural cognition. The predictive power of cultural world-views implies that the average member of the public performs these tasks quite proficiently.

Our data, consistent with that observed in other settings, suggest that those with the highest degree of science literacy and numeracy perform such tasks even more discerningly. Fitting information to identity-defining commitments makes demands on all manner of cognition—including both system 1 and system 2 reasoning. For ordinary citizens, the reward for acquiring greater scientific knowledge and more reliable technical-reasoning capacities is a greater facility to discover and use—or explain away—evidence relating to their groups’ positions.

And their recommendation is that climate science needs to be presented to the more technically literate in such a way that it does not culturally alienate them. This needs to be done because

Even if cultural cognition serves the personal interests of individuals, this form of reasoning can have a highly negative impact on collective decision making. What guides individual risk perception, on this account, is not the truth of those beliefs but rather their congruence with individuals’ cultural commitments. As a result, if beliefs about a societal risk such as climate change come to bear meanings congenial to some cultural outlooks but hostile to others, individuals motivated to adopt culturally congruent risk perceptions will fail to converge, or at least fail to converge as rapidly as they should, on scientific information essential to their common interests in health and prosperity. Although it is effectively costless for any individual to form a perception of climate-change risk that is wrong but culturally congenial, it is very harmful to collective welfare for individuals in aggregate to form beliefs this way.

There are a couple of alarming aspects to this:

1. Firstly, the idea that you can simply dismiss the arguments of those who disagree with you as being motivated by bad faith is extremely dangerous to the conduct of rational argument. It may or may not be the case that people tend to reject a certain position when that is against their interests, and to present arguments against it (and vice versa, of course) but it is still necessary to respond to their actual arguments.
2. The authors claim that one party is arguing dishonestly. That party happens to be the party that is rejecting a claim to which they are very much attached. (That is an assumption on my part, but I’d be very surprised if it wasn’t true; and it doesn’t matter for the argumentative point anyway.) They claim to know that this is possible because there is evidence that people will believe things that will support their interests, and notwithstanding the truth of things. But isn’t it equally open to their enemy party to claim that the only reason they believe the way that they do is because it’s in their interests to do so? Since we now both deny an interest in the truth to the other party, we must find other non-rationally persuasive means of making them do what we want. This doesn’t bode well, does it?
3. Have they considered the possibility that climate scientists are in exactly the same position as the rest of us wrt the effect of interests on the things that they will come to believe? This is one of the standard claims of CAGW resisters: all the non-truth-related incentives for climate scientists are on the side of support for one position whatever the truth of the matter might be. If there were in fact no CAGW, how could we trust them to resist those incentives and discover the truth? And if we can’t – because they are subject to the same psychological pressures that are supposed to be distorting our cognition – then what grounds do the authors have for accepting their claims?

The typical definition of a social group includes some combination of the following characteristics or characteristics that are equivalent to these:

1. Two or more people
2. Direct interaction amongst the members
3. Members are aware of their membership
4. Members share an interest or a cause
5. There is an organizational structure

Insofar as membership of the group is voluntary, the motivation for membership is that membership has the result that the interests of the member are advanced. (Note that these interests may be subjective, immaterial, etc. It is the evaluation of the member that counts in this case.)

Define a Group as a related set of individuals: G = <M, R>

1. The Membership of G is denoted |G|. In this case |G| = M = {m₁, …, m_n}.
2. The nature of a group is determined primarily by the nature of the relationship, R.
1. R stands for various parameters – to be clarified later – that determine the relationships that the group may enter into with other groups, and how the group may act in those relationships, how members interact within and without the group, and so on.
2. R is what distinguishes a group from just a collection of interacting individuals.

Group membership

The group relationship R has to be able to account for at least these characteristics of group membership

1. An individual may be a member of several groups.
• A person may be a male, Christian, labourer, homosexual, …
2. Some groups are mutually exclusive wrt membership. A collection of such groups D = {G₁, …, G_n}, that minimally covers another group, H, is a Division of that group and we write D|H
3. Thus, {G₁, …, G_n} is a division of H iff:
1. |G₁|, …, |G_n| are relatively disjoint, and
2. |H| ⊂ ∪_{i=1, …n} |G_i|, and
3. For i = 1, …, n, |H| ∩ |G_i| ≠ ∅.
• A group defined by religious affiliation might be mutually exclusive, since if one is a Christian one can’t be a Buddhist or a Hindu, and if one is a Hindu then one is not B or C, and, of course, if B then not C or H. Similarly for socio-economically defined groups, or educational, or residential groups, etc.
• An example of a division might be the confessional allegiances in a nation. If the citizens are one only of Buddhist or Hindu – as in Sri Lanka – then {Buddhists, Hindus} is a division of Sri Lanka. Since there are no Christians (we’ll pretend), {Buddhists, Hindus, Christians} is not a division of Sri Lanka, though it contains one.

The group memberships of an individual define its Identity wrt society. Thus for the individual x who is a member of groups G₁, …, G_n, the identity of x is that collection, and we write:

• ID(x) = {G₁, …, G_n} iff x ∈ |G₁| ∩ … ∩ |G_n|.

• The identity wrt society of the person mentioned above is male, Christian, labourer, homosexual, …

Where D is a division of H and x ∈ |H|, ID(x|D) is the member of D to which x belongs. Read it as the identity of x wrt D. Thus: For D = {G₁, …, G_n}, D|H, ID(x|D) = G_n iff x ∈ |G_n|

• Suppose we have H = Sri Lanka, D = {Buddhists, Hindus}, then it might be that ID(Bob|D) = Buddhist (if Bob is a Buddhist.)

Where D₁, …, D_n are divisions of H, we can call A = {D₁, …, D_n} an Analysis of H.

• An analysis of Sri Lanka might include divisions according to religious and racial and linguistic criteria. Thus we might have H = Sri Lanka, D₁ = {Buddhists, Hindus}, D₂ = {monolingual Tamil, monolingual Singhala, bilingual}, D₃ = {Tamil, Singhala}. Then A = {D₁, D₂, D₃} would be an analysis of Sri Lanka.

Let A = {D₁, …, D_n} be an analysis of H. Then the identity of x ∈ |H| wrt that analysis is:

• ID(x|A) = {ID(x|D₁), …, ID(x|D_n)}

In the example above we might have ID(Bob|A) = {Hindu, monolingual Tamil, Tamil}

10. And desire said, I did not see you descending, but now I see you ascending. Why do you lie since you belong to me?
11. The soul answered and said, I saw you. You did not see me nor recognize me. I served you as a garment and you did not know me.
12. When it said this, it (the soul) went away rejoicing greatly.
13. Again it came to the third power, which is called ignorance.
14. The power questioned the soul, saying, Where are you going? In wickedness are you bound. But you are bound; do not judge!
15. And the soul said, Why do you judge me, although I have not judged?
16. I was bound, though I have not bound.
17. I was not recognized. But I have recognized that the All is being dissolved, both the earthly things and the heavenly.
18. When the soul had overcome the third power, it went upwards and saw the fourth power, which took seven forms.
19. The first form is darkness, the second desire, the third ignorance, the fourth is the excitement of death, the fifth is the kingdom of the flesh, the sixth is the foolish wisdom of flesh, the seventh is the wrathful wisdom. These are the seven powers of wrath.
20. They asked the soul, Whence do you come slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
21. The soul answered and said, What binds me has been slain, and what turns me about has been overcome,
22. and my desire has been ended, and ignorance has died.
23. In an aeon I was released from a world, and in a Type from a type, and from the fetter of oblivion which is transient.
24. From this time on will I attain to the rest of the time, of the season, of the aeon, in silence.

Note the structure here:

There is a standard word mattara, meaning “keeper of the watch,” deriving from the verb MMTR, “to guard, to protect.” In Shimmusha Rabbah, Enoch was clothed with the splendor of light and made into a guardian of all the souls that ascend from earth, so there is a possible connection between that function and Enoch. Consequently, Odeberg (3 Enoch 1.125-6), Jellinek (Beiträge zur Geschichte der Kabbala, Leipzig: C.L. Fritzsche, 1852, 4) and Jastrow (A Dictionary of the Targumim, the Talmud Babli and Yerushalmi, and the Midrashic Literature, 767) propose that this may be the origin of ‘Metatron’.

Metathronios:

This is the ‘default’ derivation. It is accepted by Merkur (Gnosis, NY:SUNY, 1993, p. 169) (with reference to S. Lieberman, “Metatron, the Meaning of His Name and His Functions” in I. Gruenwald, Apocalyptic and Merkavah Mysticism, Leiden:Brill, 1980, pp. 235–241) and is noted by Scholem (MTJM:69). But Scholem’s objections to it are pretty strong: there is no such Greek word – no matter how attractive the meta + thronos (behind/with the throne) construction might seem; there isn’t a good reason for the use or invention of a Greek term here when it is not done elsewhere; there doesn’t seem to be a good way to derive the precise Hebrew form from the supposed Greek term. (Though just on this last point, it’s possible that numerological concerns could have been influential. See ‘metatrior’ below.)

Metatyrannos:

A Greek term meaning ‘with the ruler’. This proposal is often associated with the term synthronos which is ‘together on the throne.’ To be frank, I can’t see any reason for thinking the two terms are related or what one adds in plausibility to the other. It is even more mystifying to be told that there is the possibility of deriving Metatron from synthronos; how is that supposed to work?

Metator:

The name “Metatron,” which, as stated above, occurs only in Hebrew writings, is in itself striking. The derivation from the Latin “metator” (=”guide”) is doubtless correct, for Enoch also is represented as a guide in the apocryphal work which bears his name; and the Hebrew Book of Enoch, in which, however, reference to Me?a?ron is constantly implied, says: “He is the most excellent of all the heavenly host, and the guide [Me?a?ron] to all the treasuries of my [God]” (B. H. ii. 117) (Jewish Enc. s.v. Metatron)

This was first apparently proposed by Eleazar ben Judah (c. 1165 – c. 1230) and Moshe ben Nachman, and revived by H. Odeberg in his edition of 3 Enoch 1.125, 1.126; but Scholem is dismissive of this too since “there is nothing in the authentic sayings about Metatron that justified the derivation of the name from metator.” (G. Scholem, Jewish Gnosticism, p. 43) On the other hand Alexander (op. cit. 243, 228 n 11) notes that metator is known as a loan word in Hebrew and Jewish Aramaic, and claims that this gives added support to the idea that the word could be adapted by the inventors of Metatron. But this is misguided: there is no doubt that it is possible to get to metatron from metator, given enough flexibility in the manner of ‘derivation’, and that the word was there for the having; the question is whether there’s any of the evidence that that is what happened that we would expect to see – and there isn’t.

Metatrior + gematria:

Grunwald (in Jahrb. für Jüdische Gesch. und Literatur, 1901, pp. 127 ff.) has yet another solution for the problem of Metatron. The ancients had already noticed that the numerical value of the letters in the word “Metatron” corresponded with those of the word “Shaddai” (= 314), and “Metatron” is also said to mean “palace” (“metatrion”), and to be connected with the divine name, MQWM (“place”), etc. (Jewish Enc. s.v. Metatron)

Metron + Metator:

A new proposal that Orlov (op. cit.) describes thus:

Still another possible etymological source for the name “Metatron” is the Greek metron, “a measure.” Adolf Jellinek may well be the first scholar to suggest metron as an alternative explanation of Metatron, on the assumption that Metatron was identical with Horos.[20] In his recent article Gedaliahu Stroumsa provides some new convincing reasons for the acceptance of this etymology. These reasons focus on the fact that Metatron not only carried God’s name but also measured the Deity and was thus viewed as God’s Shi’ur Qomah (the measurement of the divine Body). [21] Stroumsa argues that “renewed attention should be given to metron and/or metator (a conflation of the two terms should not be excluded) as a possible etymology of Metatron.” [22]

[20] Odeberg, 3 Enoch, 1.134.
[21] Stroumsa, “Form(s) of God: Some Notes on Metatron and Christ,” 287.
[22] ibid. 287.

I particularly like the idea of a conflation of the terms, but surely this is a derivation that it would be very difficult to justify. One would like to see other examples of such conflations and whether they are as unremarked upon as this one. Otherwise this is an ad hoc solution to a straightforward problem.

Mitra:

The proposal that I’m most partial to is the one that makes Metatron a hidden form of the Zoroastrian Mitra. The possibility was raised by Kohut (Jüdische Angelologie und Dämonologie, pp. 36 et seq., Leipsic, 1866 – ref. in Jewish Enc. s.v. Metatron) on the grounds of some similarities of the functions of the two beings. The editors of the Jew. Enc. (sv. Merkaba) certainly seem to be convinced, and they point out that

Mithra, the heavenly charioteer, with his Quadriga, a chariot drawn by four horses, who was worshiped in ancient Persia as the god of light and regarded in early Roman times as the prime mover of the world, formed of the four elements (Dio Chrysostomus, “Oratio,” xxxvi.; see Cumont, “Die Mysterien des Mithra,” 1903, pp. 87-88; Windischmann, “Zoroastrische Studien,” 1863, pp. 309-312), was invoked under mysterious rites as the mediator between the inaccessible and unknowable Deity, in the ethereal regions of light, and man on earth (Cumont, l.c. pp. 95, 122).

Which would be an interesting enough parallel, but I think there is a little more to this too. It was mentioned above that the name ‘Yaho’el’ became attached to Metatron, and the suspicion on the part of some is that this is due to speculative explanation for the claim by God that the guardian angel of Ex 23:21 ‘has my name in him.’ Clearly if the angels name was to contain the tetragrammaton YHWH or some part of it then the name was not ‘Metatron’. Therefore, Metatron had to be associated with a more standard theophoric name. Thus, in the 2nd C we find then that Enoch was identified with the angel Yaho’el, and that name is also the first of the 70 names of Metatron listed in Gaonic period texts. Yaho’el is also referred to as the “lesser Yaho” by Jewish gnostics, and that term in the form “lesser YHWH” was daringly used by Merkabah mystics to refer to their guardian angel, who sits by (?) the throne of God.

In any case, having made the obvious (and obviously true) points that Confucianism appears in large part to be a secular system:

Its teachings are almost exclusively concerned with behavior in the empirical world: ren —“altruism or “human-mindedness”; li —ritual and etiquette; xiao —“filial piety”. These are moral principles that are applied to the so-called “five bonds”  —between ruler and subject, father and son, husband and wife; older and younger brother; friend and friend.

And that:

It is quite clear that these virtues (including the behaviors they promoted, as in ritual and etiquette) could be divorced from any specific religious beliefs.

And yet he concludes that it is a religion on the basis that

there is one classical and rather central Confucian belief that, I think, is unambiguously religious—that of tian, usually translated as “heaven”. It is not theistic, although gods are associated with it. Rather, it is a cosmic order, supernatural in that it transcends the empirical world, over which it presides and with which it interacts. It thus serves as the necessary, ipso facto religious foundation for all the secular virtues propagated by Confucian teachings.

And since the moral order that Confucianism promotes is justified by appeal to this supernatural entity tian, it follows that the ideology itself is a religious system.

It is certainly true that tian (?) plays a justificatory role in Confucianism, but only incidentally, and far from essentially. In fact, as far as I can tell, the concept is used almost always metaphorically in early Confucian texts. Thus it may be said that a ruler was entitled to rule only so long as he possessed the ‘mandate of Heaven’ (??, tianmìng), and this was a fairly standard opinion of the time, but the Confucianists do not depend on Heaven to make things turn out the way they ought: they seem always to have other justifications than appealing to the will of Heaven. In the case of the mandate of Heaven, for example, the Mencian version of Confucianism explained that a king could be a king only so long as he behaved as a king. If he failed to behave as a king – i.e. failed to follow the rules and rites and to have the appropriate ren as indicated by the sages of old – then he could not be called a king. The ‘rectification of names’ would name him as the criminal that he was, which would allow his oppressed subjects – who are accordingly not his subjects to rid themselves of this burden. Thus King Hsuan of Ch’i asked of Mencius (1B8):

“Is it permissible for a vassal to murder his lord?”

Mencius replied, “One who robs rén you call a ‘robber;’ one who wrecks yì you call a ‘wrecker;’ and one who robs and wrecks you call an ‘outlaw.’ I have heard that [Wu] punished the outlaw Zhou – I have not heard that he murdered his lord.

1, 2, 3 Enoch; 3 Baruch, Testaments of the XII Patriarchs (Levi); Ascension of Isaiah; Apocalypse of Abraham; Testament of Abraham.

1. There is uncertainty about whether the ascent is physical or spiritual.[1]
2. The heavens are entered by gates or doorways.
3. There is water in the 1st heaven (sea, snow, clouds, dew).[2]
4. Rebellious angels are constrained in 2nd heaven.[3]
5. The protagonist finds ‘paradise’ (in the 3rd heaven.)[4]
6. There is a great light in the 7th heaven.[5]
7. Angels are opposed to the ascent of the protagonist.[6]
8. There are visions of (flaming) thrones, and God sits on one.[7]
9. The protagonist is transformed (before the theophany)[8]