Which fields are these? This sounds to me a definition that could be useful in e.g. animal studies, but vastly insufficient when it comes to the complexities of status with regard to humans.
Yes, it came from animal studies; but they use in evolutionary psychology as well (and I think in cognitive psychology and biological anthropology too). Yes, it is vastly insufficient. However, I think it is the best we have. More importantly, it is the least biased one I have seen (exactly because it came from animal studies). I feel like most definitions of status are profoundly biased in order to give the author a higher status. Take yours. You are one of the top-5 friendly/likeable people I know, and you put friendless as a major criteria. (I think I nested an appeal to flattery inside an ad hominem here).
according to this definition, an armed group such as occupiers or raiders who kept forcibly taking resources from the native population would be high status among the population, which seems clearly untrue.
Yes, they would have high status (which would be disputed by the natives, probably). Don’t you agree the Roman had a higher status than the tribes they invaded? And yes, Nazis invading, killing, torturing, pillaging and raping the French would also have higher status (at least temporally, until someone removed their trachea). That means status is a bad correlate of moral worthiness, but so is most of the things evolution has ever produced. I think this definition causes a bad emotional reaction (I had it too) because it’s difficult to twist in order to increase your status, and is morally repugnant. It doesn’t mean it is false, to the contrary.
What makes you say that?
It would seem that in a world where everyone is friendly, things would escalate and only the extremely friendly would cause warm fuzzies. Or, people would feel warm fuzzies so often it would be irrelevant. (I.e., I used my philosopher-contrafactual-epistemic-beam, scanned the possible worlds, and concluded that. I.e., I have no idea what I’m talking about.)
Yes, it came from animal studies; but they use in evolutionary psychology as well (and I think in cognitive psychology and biological anthropology too). Yes, it is vastly insufficient. However, I think it is the best we have. More importantly, it is the least biased one I have seen (exactly because it came from animal studies). I feel like most definitions of status are profoundly biased in order to give the author a higher status. Take yours. You are one of the top-5 friendly/likeable people I know, and you put friendless as a major criteria. (I think I nested an appeal to flattery inside an ad hominem here).
Yes, they would have high status (which would be disputed by the natives, probably). Don’t you agree the Roman had a higher status than the tribes they invaded? And yes, Nazis invading, killing, torturing, pillaging and raping the French would also have higher status (at least temporally, until someone removed their trachea). That means status is a bad correlate of moral worthiness, but so is most of the things evolution has ever produced. I think this definition causes a bad emotional reaction (I had it too) because it’s difficult to twist in order to increase your status, and is morally repugnant. It doesn’t mean it is false, to the contrary.
It would seem that in a world where everyone is friendly, things would escalate and only the extremely friendly would cause warm fuzzies. Or, people would feel warm fuzzies so often it would be irrelevant. (I.e., I used my philosopher-contrafactual-epistemic-beam, scanned the possible worlds, and concluded that. I.e., I have no idea what I’m talking about.)