With the agricultural revolution, the human economy evolved as an integrated, mutually reinforcing whole. There is no real separation between “market” and “government.” The global human socioeconomic system is a single, unified, integrated superorganism. Without government investment and coordination of economic activity, the system would cease to function. The question is not how much the government spends but where the money goes. Who or what does the state serve? The state/market ultrasocial system is supported by harnessing of lower-level processes to work for the benefit of higher levels. Theorists of social evolution call this downward causation. When human society became ultrasocial, downward causation called forth institutions, belief systems, and political movements that reinforce the goal of surplus production and protect those at the top who control the economic process and the distribution of that surplus.

This chapter explores some issues having to do with levels in psychiatry and elsewhere in science. I distinguish among several different notions of level and discuss why talk of levels is sometimes useful in science, although it can also be a source of considerable confusion. I defend the claim that it is legitimate to think in terms of causal relations between levels (including so-called downward causation from upper to lower levels) against several recent criticisms, providing scientific example of when this motion seems appropriate.