You write as if handing in an undergraduate essay. I'm not particularly interested in how well you've understood the sources, I'm not grading you. I want to know why you find those positions persuasive (or not).

All you've given me above is that some sources say X and that you agree. I get nothing from that.

:up:

You write as if handing in an undergraduate essay. I'm not particularly interested in how well you've understood the sources, I'm not grading you. I want to know why you find those positions persuasive (or not).

All you've given me above is that some sources say X and that you agree. I get nothing from that. — Isaac

Im interested in how well you’ve understood the sources. If you don’t follow them, I can make it a high school essay. I thought i explained why I find the enactivist sources persuasive, and why I prefer them to Prinz and Haidt. Do you agree with Prinz and Haidt or the enactivist critique of them ?

Im interested in how well you’ve understood the sources. If you don’t follow them, I can make it a high school essay. — Joshs

I see. Well then we're not going to have a very productive conversation. We are, at best, peers. You're not my teacher. If we disagree about sources, we disagree. It is no more my failure to understand them than it is yours, because you are no more an authority on their interpretation than I.

It seems best we leave it there.

Yes, I think in philosophy it could be contrasted with something like sophisticated. — Jamal

No, this is exactly what I'm trying to avoid thinking, that primitive is contrasted with sophisticated. I don't think that's what it means in philosophy. But I won't dwell on this anymore as I don't have any other objections.

Thanks.

However, in my opinion it’s pretty clear that Pinker means it in the sense I identified: characteristic of an earlier stage of development, when Enlightenment had not been brought to fruition in some way, or just when things were worse. — Jamal

:up:

No, this is exactly what I'm trying to avoid thinking, that primitive is contrasted with sophisticated. I don't think that's what it means in philosophy — L'éléphant

But I agreed with you, and the word “sophisticated” fits perfectly. You said primitive in philosophy means “basic and simple, as in the ordinary means of dealing with things,” and I agreed, using the examples of naive realism and the natural attitude. Sophisticated is the appropriate opposite, meaning developed to a high degree of complexity or made in a complicated way.

Anyway, I’m happy not to dwell on it any more.

I've read through most of the thread and see that @Moliere @Judaka and @fdrake have emphasised the contextual and fragmentary nature of the concept of progress. That's key for me. Progress, in its normative use, assumes values. We ought to specify our relevant value applied to a particular realm to make our claims on progress coherent. E.g. "In terms of efficiency [value], there is progress in science [realm]". That would seem uncontroversial. But what about: "In terms of security [value], there is progress in science [realm]". Existential threats caused by nuclear and fossil fuel technologies make this questionable. So, does science represent progress? Yes and no. Without a sensible context, it's not a good question.

And the idea of systemic socioeconomic progress is particularly problematised by @Moliere's "for whom" question. If "progress" is the creation of winners and losers in this context, it's an inherently unstable term not only because some lose but because losing is relative and levels of disparity count. The notion of progress can't be divorced from how it's subjectively experienced. Being "objectively" better off (even in the specified ways emphasised above) as a homeless person on Skid Row as opposed to being a historical hunter gatherer may not represent meaningful progress subjectively considering your respective surrounds.

That's a powerful point. — Tom Storm

If so that'd be because it leans against the now familiar error of mistaking the "what is' for the "what we want".

No list of the changes made by technology can demonstrate that we are progressing. One must also include an evaluation of those changes.

Pinker thinks that he can demonstrate that progress is happening, by listing facts about the world. But saying that we are making progress is an evaluation of those facts. Hence it is open to et al. to disagree.

Hence, all this might be so:

The truth is that nothing can absolve humanity of its crimes and nothing can make up for the suffering of the past, ever. Nothing and nobody will redeem humanity. Nothing will make it okay, and we will never be morally cleansed. We certainly ought to strive for a good, free society, but it will never have been worth it. — Jamal

...and yet you and I might still think that things are improving.

The kids who took it as a given that things would get worse had little motivation to try to make things better. It will be the kids who think things can improve who make a positive difference to what happens. So the myth of progress is methodological.

There is an obvious parallel here to virtue ethics, in that it's folk who think they can improve on their actions as are the ones who work to improve themselves. Those who think they cannot improve their standing will not make an effort.

Mark May showed that we have a choice here. Any* who wish to has the capacity to leave. Very few make that choice. There is a performative tension for any who choose to live in a technological dependent society and yet deny that such a society is better than an less dependent society.

* Perhaps not anyone. Considering physical disability might give an different perspective here. A wheelchair does not do well in the gorge country.

Any* who wish to has the capacity to leave. Very few make that choice. There is a performative tension for any who choose to live in a technological dependent society and yet deny that such a society is better than an less dependent society. — Banno

At the risk of further bruising from this wall I appear to be banging my head against here, this still ignores the very real possibility (one might even be tempted to use 'fact' here) that the prosperity of some nations is bought at the expense of others. The prosperity of some communities, even within nations, is bought at the expense of others.

The fact that one lucky enough to be born on the winning side does not want to move to the losing one doesn't indicate that humanity as a whole is progressing, only that the lives of the losers are so miserable that one would not choose them even against one's moral judgement of the life of the winners.

Progress often comes at a cost and the cost is not always borne by the beneficiaries of that progress. Pinker's substantial error is to look only at the beneficiaries and assume (quite offensively) that those who bear the costs of our progress are in their lowly position, not because we put them there, but because of some fault in their thinking.

If cancer progresses, it's not toward a goal. It just means it's continuing to develop along certain lines. Enlightenment progress is like that in some ways since evolution is an example of it. The whole point was that there's no purpose to it.

The idea that it's only progress if it's toward something good is the reinsertion of values after we've already seen that we're just accidents doomed to oblivion. Since we can't seem to maintain an entirely amoral outlook for long, we'll find values one way or another. In other words, it's going to be progress of some kind, since progress has been an element of goodness since the west adopted the Persian worldview a few thousand years ago.

The idea that it's only progress if it's toward something good is the reinsertion of values after we've already seen that we're just accidents doomed to oblivion. — frank

Then toward what is it progressing?

The protection of certain human rights from the actions of evil doers, the ignorant and territorial ambitions must be defended with equal or superior force lest the progress made so for to attain and maintain those rights be compromised.

That’s progress, it’s tool science and by extension weapons of war, medicine and other life enhancing inventions.

Then toward what is it progressing? — Isaac

Just means development. Like if a person has had a stroke and now their mental status is degrading, one of the possibilities is that it's a progression of the stroke.

Progress can also be an element of goodness. In Christianity, goodness is not something we necessarily see by looking at a person's circumstances. It's that a person is always progressing toward God, trying to become better and reaching for redemption. This is part of our Persian birthright.

Just means development. — frank

Then you're not distinguishing between progress and merely 'change'.

So how can anything be seen as 'slipping back', and not just more change?

Then you're not distinguishing between progress and merely 'change'. — Isaac

Think of a convergent progression in math. If that doesn't explain it, I probably won't be able to by adding more words.

Think of a convergent progression in math. — frank

A convergent series tends to a limit, gets closer and closer to a given number as the set increases.

What is 'progress' converging on, if it's like a convergent series.

I'm a bit of an energy-determinist, which is maybe just another word for taking the laws of physics seriously...

It's my contention that most of what people call scientific, technological and moral progress largely follows from the fact that we progressively use a lot more energy (since the industrial revolution), which is the real driver behind all of this.

None of the technological advances of the past centuries could've taken off if we didn't have increasingly larges amounts of energy to power them... and to keep powering them. It's calculated that in western societies we use per capita the energy-equivalent of more than 100 human slaves working 24/7 (energy-slaves).

Because of that we can live like kings of old in material terms. Because of that utopian ideals like liberalism, socialism and communism, or moral progress in terms of equality, non-discrimination became possible in principle. Because of that we could afford larger parts of society to devote their time on things like science. People regularly get the causality backwards on these things.

In the idea of progress ala Pinker is assumed that this will last at least a while, that these advances are somewhat permanent and can be build on going forward. If it would end tomorrow, or some day in the near future, all of this would sound rather hollow.

Now of course the elephant in this particular room is that most of the energy we use, are fossil fuels which are being used up at a rate that is much faster than they regenerate. Futhermore we are destroying important parts of the ecosystems we depend upon in doing so. None of this seems sustainable, which just means - in plainer terms - that it will end sooner rather than later.

The belief that progress will keep on going the way it has gone the past centuries, could be nothing more than the epistemological shortsightedness of humans having lived their entirely life on the sharp end of the hockey-stick of progress.

A convergent series tends to a limit, gets closer and closer to a given number as the set increases. — Isaac

It never reaches the limit. Ok, try divergent progression.

I think I understand and pretty much agree with all of your points, but I've run out of steam on this topic.

It doesn't look like your argument construes things getting better as part of any narrative or ideology. Pinker's quote attributes the "successful way of thinking" to be "Enlightenment". You've left it unspecified. — fdrake

I now think that the steel man argument was a distraction and wasn't well thought-out. I think I left the Enlightenment unspecified to allow me to focus on Progress (general progress, or progressive history) rather than attempting to encompass everything in the quotation. In which case I should have proposed a different argument, omitting any mention of "ways of thinking," which was just an allusion to the Enlightenment.

Where I was going with it was to prompt myself to properly justify my attribution of myth, or irrational faith, to the concept of "primitive conditions", and thereby to Progress--before we even got to the ideology that might be thought to ensure it, i.e., Enlightenment. Whether they can be divided up neatly like that, I'm not sure.

Are there Sadists or are there people who cause pain in others on the basis of a diverse variety of motives that we ignore when we slap the label of sadist on them? Do you remember when you were a kid there were a few kids who enjoyed torturing animals? Do you remember anything else about them, like what their family lives were like, whether they seemed to harbor a lot of anger towards the world, for instance? That is an example of a motive the label of sadist hides from view. When we believe we have been unfairly treated by those closest to us, we can manifest it as anger against the world. We believe the world has treated us badly and it deserves to suffer. We justify our actions as making things right. Our ‘sadism’ isn’t so much an enjoyment of the pain we inflict as the satisfaction we get from correcting an imbalance in the cosmos. — Joshs

I want to call this psychological type a paladin -- the paladin justifies the violence they inflict on the basis of the enjoyment of correcting an imbalance in the cosmos.

Suppose a social organism, like the United States, where the police and soldiers are all paladins.

The paladins really like being paladins, and there are generals who happen to benefit from having paladins at their disposal. So they push to increase their stock of paladins through an Honor Code.

In such a world, even though these people are no sadists, they are a part of a social organism which increases violence within the world. So, from the point of view of view of the increase or decrease of violence, at least, even if no one is evil -- violence increases, and regress is what I'd call that.

I think I understand and pretty much agree with all of your points, but I've run out of steam on this topic. — Jamal

Happens to me all the time. I'll return to a topic and find I have maybe 3 new thoughts and then back to the wondering part :D

But for our purposes here, it might be useful for folk to contemplate what it means to tell children that things can get better.

And not just children. — Banno

True. And while I'm saying there is no progress, my set-up doesn't make progress impossible -- only points out that the analysis is in the negative at the moment.

There's a balancing act in forging the myth -- between optimism and pessimism, because both actually lead to human stupidity: both doing nothing, one because it'll happen anyways and the other because it doesn't matter, when the very problem is the doing nothing part :D

I've run out of steam on this topic. — Jamal

I've found that about 150 posts is an ideal length for most discussions. After that, everyone, including me, starts repeating themselves. I'm not surprised you've had enough.

I think I understand and pretty much agree with all of your points, but I've run out of steam on this topic. — Jamal

Same. I read your post and thought of analysing the logical structure of agglomerating historical event series together under a narrative. All the thoughts I had were pedantic and added nothing besides a headache.

I've run out of steam on this topic. — Jamal

I didn't realise we were allowed to do that. I thought we ran 'last man standing' rules...

Yep, you don’t have to stay in the Ukraine thread if you don’t feel like it. :wink:

@Jamal Wait, what? You know how long it took to read this mfer?? :cry:

Left it too late. My mind moves fast.

Yep, you don’t have to stay in the Ukraine thread if you don’t feel like it — Jamal

That's all very well, but how do we know who won?

Me, for having not posted.