Progress: an insufferable enthusiasm

Though it's not my focus here, I have a more mundane question: how have the "primitive conditions" he lists, namely "war, scarcity, disease, ignorance, and lethal menace," actually been alleviated or overcome by "Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress"? Certainly, the treatment and eradication of disease has made progress that we should all celebrate. But what about the others? I'll leave you to ponder that.

conservatives, of the more old-fashioned kind at least, get off the hook.

I also feel that I cannot disagree with him about the progress since enlightenment, but at the same time I can't agree either.

Which assumptions are hiding under the surface?

One gets off the hook by not trying to get off the hook. This is old-fashioned:-- "We are all sinners..." Progress therefore is not made, because progress in life science entails equal progress in death science, progress in healing entails progress in sickening and torture. Individual life-expectancy has increased, but species survival expectancy has radically reduced.

1. Nowhere is it established how we (enlightened countries) justify such a discreet separation from those benighted countries of war, famine and pestilence. It's as if Pinker treats borders as having some deep cultural/psychological fence around them such that cultures within can be judged in isolation.

2. The assumption that recorded history is equal to 'the past' which, of course it isn't. What goes into the records is a selected subset of everything that actually happened. One of the main critiques I've read of Pinker here is that he takes a single, fairly famously biased, source for his data on Hunter-Gatherer tribes, for example. We shouldn't confuse the academic canon with the lived experiences of the people there.

I like (though hadn't thought of it before) your noting that 'the past' is simply assumed to be source of these evils rather than actual material conditions (which, obviously could re-materialise). I agree it dangerously implies we need do nothing, that just passively 'allowing' progress will result in the benefits assigned to it. It has a disturbing paternalistic feel that I don't think is accidental. Pinker's target, after all, is not the forces which keep these benighted countries down. His audience is Western. His target is that particular branch of progressivism which sees technological and capitalist growth as a concern. His message is "stand aside".

Wouldn't he just say that in actuality, the Enlightenment was only realized in nation-states, and especially in the US, where he and his friends stand at the pinnacle of history?

I share Pinker's animus towards some of that progressivism.

My temptation is to think beyond Nietzsche and say: one day we'll get it right. This would not be to endorse Progress, only to admit that we can find better ways of living.

Me too. I was watching the Munk debates on both capitalism and populism and the same theme struck me, that the motivating ideology of any movement is not the same as the product. There's a disconnect created by the fact that ideologies gather popular support and as such become tools in themselves which can be wielded in the service of other, completely different ideologies.

I think enlightenment, progressiveness, whatever you call it, is like that. The notion of trusting in science, the rule of law, reason etc is one thing. The purposes that such a trust is put to is another.

?Joshs I think beyond Nietzsche by bypassing him.

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.

But you’re still a moralist, not yet beyond good and evil

This fits with what I was saying recently about meritocracy. Whatever its… merits (and I question those), the idea functions as ideology to obscure existing inequality or even to justify it by implying you got to the top on merit, and I’m still poor because I’m lazy and talentless (though the latter is less often stated openly).

It can be seen as progressive in the sense that as civilization developed at some point (I think China was first) power was given based on merit rather than kinship, which may have resulted power exercised more competently.

Before capitalism, social relations were based on traditions and obligations that had nothing to do with money, and the people at the top had other things to think about, like winning wars, getting in to heaven, or producing an heir (and if they did make money, they didn't actually make it but just took it). A clan chief was obliged to protect his clan members and they owed him loyalty and service; a vassal was obliged to fight for his king to justify holding on to his fief, and also to protect his peasants, who in turn owed him part of their produce; and so on across many variations and times up to the modern period. Capitalism swept most of this away. The result in connection to merit was, ideally, that at last people could be rewarded for their effort and ability, not for their existing attachments of family, class, guild, religion, tradition, obligation, and so on.

This fits with what I was saying recently about meritocracy.

Not only that, but the narrative offers either the present day or a future utopia as a stand-in for the Day of Judgement, or perhaps for heaven, and it begins to look like a matter of faith. Faith that progress can redeem humanity, that everything will be worth it in the end.

Another interesting wrinkle in regards to the progress narrative is the role the Muslim world played during the middle ages, while Europe was mired in the "dark" ages.

. Of course he is acknowledging that those conditions exist in the present, but for him this is first and foremost because they are relics.

Islamic culture thrived by discovering and reinterpreting Greek philosophy

Maybe I’ll say something intelligent about it tomorrow.

Most people agree that life is better than death. Health is better than sickness. Sustenance is better than hunger. Abundance is better than poverty. Peace is better than war. Safety is better than danger. Freedom is better than tyranny. Equal rights are better than bigotry and discrimination. Literacy is better than illiteracy. Knowledge is better than ignorance. Intelligence is better than dull??wittedness. Happiness is better than misery. Opportunities to enjoy family, friends, culture, and nature are better than drudgery and monotony.

All these things can be measured. If they have increased over time, that is progress.

One could argue that religious pluralism has de-progressed, but ironically this isn't even something the progress narrative generally considers, because it begins with the hubristic assumption that religion itself is in the same camp as war, famine, etc; something to be cast off and left behind.

So isn’t that the past itself is bad, but that conditions were worse than now. If his conditions were to reverse he would have to say the past is worse according to his own measure.

But, even aside from how controversial his evidence is (which someone else might address), this is precisely the blindness of the narrative of Progress. Those conditions are not characteristic only of primitive or scientifically unenlightened societies.

To where and to what we are progressing is never mentioned.

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.

Is he essentially just another nostalgic modernist liberal?

I can't help but feel Pinker is an old fashioned figure, the kind of public educator with faith in progress I grew up with. My question for you is could his position be enhanced by more rigorous philosophical knowledge? Is he essentially just another nostalgic modernist liberal?

I was struck by this

Don't confuse pessimism with profundity: problems are inevitable, but problems are solvable, and diagnosing every setback as a symptom of a sick society is a cheap grab for gravitas

Finally, drop the Nietzsche. His ideas may seem edgy, authentic, baad, while humanism seems sappy, unhip, uncool But what's so funny about peace, love, and understanding?

Enlightenment cannot stop questioning the way things are, or it’s not Enlightenment any more

Can this process eventually transcend Enlightenment? Is post-modern thinking an inevitable outcome of such an Enlightenment process? Isn't the eventual trajectory of questioning and more questioning anti-foundationalism?

I’d recommend Graeber and Wengrow’s Dawn of Everything. It is a critique of Darwinist progressive accounts of anthropological change as seen in Pinker, Diamond and Harari.

In 2018 Steven Pinker published his book Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress.

I think "useful" is the wrong way to think about it.

People are brought together by communally held beliefs (communism, for instance) because they give life meaning, from which value is derived. This isn't unique to religion.

"Scarcity" seems the fundamental driver of dominance hierarchies and imperialism that no amount of "progress" has put an end to or significantly diminished, so the title of Pinker's book doesn't recommend itself to me

That said, Jamal, why do you think I should read it?

I think "useful" is the wrong way to think about it. People are brought together by communally held beliefs (communism, for instance) because they give life meaning, from which value is derived. This isn't unique to religion.

Which only underscores the superfluousness of religion.

It's the wrong way for believers or followers to think about it, certainly, because if they do it will tend to be less useful. When people realize that they're being manipulated by a false narrative they tend to be less cooperative with those that try to use it.

In this post I'm just looking at a small excerpt, not really to criticize the book itself but to dig out the meaning of the narrative of progress which we find at work, not only in Pinker's thinking, but more widely in the culture.

Technology advances, but just in my lifetime humanity has become able to destroy ourselves.

I disagree. I don't accept the binary of religious belief and secular belief; they're different flavors of the same thing, and again, what they do is give the lives of believers a sense of purpose, meaning and value. If this sounds corny, just reflect and examine your own life, beliefs, and what you value. Even a nihilist or rigorous individualist does not function outside of this reality. Religion is, in a sense, simply an organized narrative around which groups of people orient their lives, beliefs and values. You are no different than a muslim in this way. That's why I think the concept of "usefulness" in regards to "religion" (you're actually using it in regards to a set of beliefs) is misleading. Religion is not the opiate of the masses; rather, belief is what keeps people going, religious or secular

But certainly, technology seems to be the most obvious form of real progress, and therefore the form that we question the least. I don't think this is a good thing.

But then, Pinker isn't really representing all the Enlightenment values he claims as his own - only the aspects of it that are adopted by MBA courses and hawkish economic rationalists

I'll just add that I was motivated by the both of you to re-read the Yeats poem, and the hair stood up on my neck. Hasn't happened in awhile.

moral improvement almost always coincides with increased mastery over the conditions of life

Why does humanity need redemption? Humanity is just better at killing and dominating than other animals. Life is about killing and domination, competition and conflict, eating and being eaten, and suffering and causing suffering. Shouldn't humans be praised for trying to rise above that, and having any kind of success?

It seems OP is just a question about what measuring stick we should use... And you've decided it should be extraordinarily high. Isn't that the source of your relative pessimism?

Religion is, in a sense, simply an organized narrative around which groups of people orient their lives, beliefs and values. You are no different than a muslim in this way. That's why I think the concept of "usefulness" in regards to "religion" (you're actually using it in regards to a set of beliefs) is misleading. Religion is not the opiate of the masses; rather, belief is what keeps people going, religious or secular.

I think the way you describe social and cultural institutions and practices is shallow.

A Muslim has faith in their religious authorities

A Muslim has faith in their religious authorities.

Like many people today I’m not bound by faith in religious authority and can think for myself and not be constrained in moral development.

What they have faith in is the entire narrative of their belief system, with all it's wrinkles and curiosities, in the same way you have faith in whatever belief system you hold.

So when you say that the rational atheist is no less beholden to his belief system than the Muslim, you're ignoring what it means to make a rational decision.

The mental process of going through arguments pro and con for, say, homosexual marriage, are not similar to the mental process of checking in a book or asking an authority figure, even if both processes are reliant on faith in a system of beliefs.

This discussion is not about the book.

Within any given religion, there are classic forms of thinking (philosophies?) that allow for a heuristic approach. Within the context of any given religion, there are pluralities that mirror the pluralism of Enlightenment thought... In Islam, for instance, the variance of jurisprudence should at least cause us to stop and consider it.

I don't think (but I don't know for sure) that a muslim would agree. Rationality exists in Islam. It's just not the same rationality that we know. To a muslim, rationality is arguably based on jurisprudence.

I guarantee you any member of an ulema would roll their eyes at best at this characature.

I don’t think much depth is needed to point out progress, at least where religion is concerned.

The separation of church and state for instance. Good progress, yes?

I think "useful" is the wrong way to think about it. People are brought together by communally held beliefs (communism, for instance) because they give life meaning, from which value is derived. This isn't unique to religion.

I'll just add that I was motivated by the both of you to re-read the Yeats poem, and the hair stood up on my neck. Hasn't happened in awhile.

What they have faith in is the entire narrative of their belief system, with all it's wrinkles and curiosities, in the same way you have faith in whatever belief system you hold.

But you are bound by faith in whatever you believe in. Whether that constitutes "thinking for yourself" is open to debate at best, and whether "thinking for yourself" liberates you from being "constrained in moral development" (what does that mean?) is also up for debate. What exactly do you mean by thinking for yourself?

Pope Urban II:
Proclamation of the First Crusade (1095)

The Turks, a race of Persians, who have penetrated within the boundaries of Romania even to the Mediterranean to that point which they call the Arm of the Saint George, in occupying more and more of the lands of the Christians, have overcome them, have overthrown churches, and have laid waste God's kingdom. If you permit this supinely for very long, God's faithful ones will be still further subjected....

I speak to those present, I send word to those not here; moreover, Christ commands it. Remission of sins will be granted for those going thither, if they end a shackled life either on land or in crossing the sea, or in struggling against the heathen. I, being vested with that gift from God, grant to those who go.

O what a shame, if a people, so despised, degenerate, and enslaved by demons would thus overcome a people endowed with the trust of almighty God, and shining in the name of Christ! O how many evils will be imputed to you by the Lord Himself, if you do no help those who, like you, profess Christianity!

Let those who are accustomed to wage private wars wastefully even against Believers, go forth against the Infidels in a battle worthy to be undertaken now and to be finished in victory. Now, let those, who until recently existed as plunderers, be soldiers in Christ; now, let those, who formerly contended against brothers and relations, rightly fight barbarians; now, let those, who recently were hired for a few pieces of silver, win their eternal reward.

A Muslim has faith in their religious authorities
— praxis

This is probably kind of close to blasphemy from a Muslim point of view.

I'm perfectly willing to go into more depth but I can't tell exactly where you want to go.

If you have anything specific in mind let me know, or not.

Enlightenment cannot stop questioning the way things are, or it’s not Enlightenment any more

Can this process eventually transcend Enlightenment? Is post-modern thinking an inevitable outcome of such an Enlightenment process? Isn't the eventual trajectory of questioning and more questioning anti-foundationalism?

The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it.

By which Marx meant that the point of philosophy is to change the world.

A faithful muslim obeys and honors their religious authorities

Now it feels like postmodernism, with its scepticism towards both Enlightenment universalism and the individual subject of experience, is precisely the kind of philosophy that suits modern society, with its fragmented public sphere and atomized populace. That is, it doesn’t seem like much of a challenge to the status quo, not significantly critical at all, despite sometimes seeming to be.

EDIT: I just realized: in fact, self-critical Enlightenment has not only led to postmodernist anti-humanism and anti-universalism; it has also led to philosophers like Zizek, who (I think) has made it his mission to rehabilitate both universalism and the subject. So all is not lost!

I don’t want to argue now against increased mastery, but can you explain why you think it coincides with moral improvement?

Sure, I think of humans like that sometimes. I was really just referring to the suffering of human beings, usually caused by other human beings. War, oppression, and poverty, that kind of thing. That last paragraph in the OP was a rather grand and emotive way of making the point that we shouldn’t reduce those past evils (not that they are consigned to the past) to steps on a ladder to present or future happiness.

I don’t think that’s what I’m doing. It’s more an examination of ideology, of the myth of inevitable betterment, which I think is implied in the unthinking description of unhappy conditions as primitive

It's partly because increased means changes the calculus to tip the balance towards the moral choice. Such as how the abolishment of slavery in the West coincided with the industrialisation of the West. It's easier to say "let's not have slaves because slavery is wrong" when you've got machines to do the back-breaking labour you wanted to force onto someone else

The promise of being able to do better is given to us by technological and economic improvement. The solutions we rely on today didn't exist before, and the problems we'll solve in the future will be solved with technology that doesn't exist today.

The other half is that outcomes are not just the result of our will to be good. We might look at the state of policing and law and condemn our societies as unjust. But perhaps these are just the limitations of our organisational infrastructure, our laws, and our technology, we're just bad at these things.

Why make such a point? Is Pinker guilty of reducing human suffering to mere rings in a ladder?

Considering that poverty, conflict, disease and so on all predate not only civilisation itself, but human existence. I don't think it's that unreasonable to call those conditions primitive. Why are you sure the implication is that any unhappy condition is primitive?

the gap between progress and Progress (between real advances and the myth of inevitable betterment over time).

In the memories of many readers—and in the experience of those in less fortunate parts of the world—war, scarcity, disease, ignorance, and lethal menace are a natural part of existence. We know that countries can slide back into these primitive conditions, and so we ignore the achievements of the Enlightenment at our peril.

This isn’t claiming “inevitable betterment over time”.

I think that everyone is bound, at least to some extent, by their conditioning and ideologies and that this is inescapable. Maybe that's all that you're trying to say?

You forgot to mention that the purpose, meaning, and value within it are shared.

As for religion, it's as though you're only willing to acknowledge the positive aspects

If my ultimate authority is science or whatever, what happens if I were to defy its decrees? Would I be declared a heretic and ostracized by the scientific community and lose the sense of purpose, meaning, and value that I share with them? :fear:

They don't have religious authorities that compare to Christian ones.

I don't know what your ultimate authority is. My guess is if you feel that you don't have one, you're just not aware of what it is.

In the OP? I don’t see the claim.

about anti-enlightenment (I think that’s the term he uses) movements

Often, the worst way to become prisoner of a system is to have a dream that things may turn better, there is always the possibility of change. Because it is precisely this secret dream that keeps you enslaved to the system.

Could Enlightenment be that dream?

It seems to me that atheists submit to authority in their thinking as much as religious people.

Often, the worst way to become prisoner of a system is to have a dream that things may turn better, there is always the possibility of change. Because it is precisely this secret dream that keeps you enslaved to the system.

Could Enlightenment be that dream?

It seems to me that atheists submit to authority in their thinking as much as religious people.

That's why I was trying to emphasise difference rather than scoring either. Athiests (rationalists, empiricists...) are, quite fairly, bristled when told they 'just the same' as religious people in their belief systems, having made such strenuous efforts to try something different. The religious are again quite fairly, upset when told their approach is old-hat or the 'cause of all wars', or some such trope.

My suspicion is that the loudest voices (which are often the minority) on either camp are distrustful of such a solution because each know their flaws and are afraid to have them exposed, but then I have a habit of psychologising everything so...

There are many counterexamples.

what framework do you use to determine if someone holds acceptable or unacceptable beliefs?

Again, the word Islam means "Submission"; it's in their very fiber, it would appear.

Ok, cool. I don't know how that affects the discussion. The word used to mean that, now it means what it means now. There's no special mojo that makes the original use of the word have some power after that use has fallen out of favor.

I agree in real life, but the reason for discussing the 'ideal' atheist here was to highlight to process difference. Essentially, one cannot check on any way the qualification of the authority in a religious approach, it's about trust and faith. No one asks for Moses's qualification, no-one checks his methodology statement. He is accepted by faith to have heard the will of God. I might trust a scientist to tell me how things are, say with physics, of which I know virtually nothing, but It's not faith. I check their qualifications. I go through a different (not better or worse, but different) mental process to arrive at my decision to believe them.

What are you trying to correct in this view? Progress isn't inevitable for you, but is it probable? Perhaps highly probable but you want to mention that perhaps something might go wrong and we should worry about the possibility? Or is your goal self-flagellation as the latter half of your OP seems to imply? Does Pinker's self-congratulatory book annoy you because you feel humans are beyond redemption? Do you just feel uncomfortable with a focus on what's going well, and you'd prefer to focus on the areas in which we're failing? What's your angle here?

Yes, it is a bit and perhaps a digression. I guess your approach to evaluating beliefs is different to mine, I was curious about your approach and whether you identify progress as a tangible phenomenon and to what extent you see secularism as being a barrier to or carrier of progress.

I was curious about your approach and whether you identify progress as a tangible phenomenon and to what extent you see secularism as being a barrier to or carrier of progress.

True. Today they take it to mean submission to God. I just meant that it doesn't come from their fiber, it comes from their heritage.

One belief of mine that's probably pretty important is that there's a sense in which each of us lives in our own world. That just means that our thoughts and beliefs shape the world we see around us.

I totally forgot about notions of the evolving consciousness of human beings.

Yes. I hold to this too.

From what I know about you, I take this at face value, yes? Sorry, there are so many sarcastic posters here, myself very much included, that I have to do a double take

It's something we should probably explore further in other threads, given the courage.

I do wear a felt hat - it's fuckin' Australia, Mate!

Good idea. George Lakoff's notion of framing is interesting in this space too.

I want to correct the view that there is an overarching general progress in history, like a magical power standing over society that we can either abide by, as Pinker wants us to do, or stupidly ignore, as we do when we do war and genocide.

And yes, the self-satisfied purveyors of Progress annoy me, because self-congratulation is not in the spirit of the Enlightenment as I see it. It is not self-critical enough. And this is a problem for me particularly because it serves to justify and glorify the system that has raised our productive potential so radically over the past few hundred years. Although the Enlightenment was importantly entwined with capitalism, the internal contradictions in that process bring their own problems, and they are what interest me, as they interested Marx (who did not lament the replacement of the old society with an industrial one).

What you cynically call magic and assumption is simply a belief in charts that plot points and show progress.

But then, it's also undeniable that there has been progress, that there is a direction to history.

Pinker provides mountains of evidence for overarching general progress in history, what kind of counterargument is there? What you cynically call magic and assumption is simply a belief in charts that plot points and show progress.

I’m not going to address the evidence here, at least not yet.

Give us a good single example from this 'mountain of evidence' you think best proves 'general progress in history'

Let’s start with technology and science. Do you think we can reasonably say there has been progress in either of these fields?

Why are you being difficult? You're well aware of the significant medical, legal, scientific, and economic improvements over the last few centuries.

Why should I play this game with you?

The cause of the upward trend is technological advancement... People invent something like a wheelbarrow... it boosts their productivity and becomes common use because it was useful. Then someone figures out a new farming technique that further boosts productivity, and humans are able to store knowledge and teach future generations about this improved technique. It's an inevitable consequence of our ability to learn and teach.

Let’s start with technology and science. Do you think we can reasonably say there has been progress in either of these fields?
— Joshs

There's been change. How would you measure 'progress'?

John Gray, who has been criticizing the idea of progress for years and is probably much more pessimistic than I am, accepts that there is progress in science, but only in science. Elsewhere, it’s a matter of gains here and losses there, because, he says, there is no general moral improvement over time.

So it’s quite possible to say that progress is an irrational faith and a myth, and also accept steady scientific advance.

Net improvements?

Are you familiar with the changes that have taken place over the past few hundred years on how philosophers of science have treated the concept of progress? For instance , the change from inductive to deductive understanding of scientific method , and from cumulative-additive to Popperian falsificationist progress. And then there’s the Kuhnian view of scientific progress, which abandons linearity in favor of the idea that to understand better is always to understand differently.

Just read what I've written with an open mind, applying the principle of charity, and resist the temptation to be pedantic or to leap to the defence of a thinker you admire, just because I appear to be attacking him.

if the starting point is the extended family/tribe, the smallest viable group, there are only extinction, stasis, or enlargement as options.

You forgot to mention that the purpose, meaning, and value within it are shared.
— praxis

No I didn't, I mentioned that.

I don't know what your ultimate authority is. My guess is if you feel that you don't have one, you're just not aware of what it is.

To deal with this misunderstanding once and for all, my point is not that Pinker outright claims inevitable betterment over time, but rather that his thinking, and the idea of progress that underlies it and is common in our culture, tends towards that or depends on it unknowingly.

Progress as a general tendency is an abstraction, and all abstractions cloud our perception of real things. That's my angle, vague as it might be.

the result of solving those problems must inevitably be progress.”

Then someone figures out a new farming technique that further boosts productivity, and humans are able to store knowledge and teach future generations about this improved technique. It's an inevitable consequence of our ability to learn and teach.

The undeniability of progress is easily overstated, especially by those who believe they have made the most, - 'that surely cannot have been accidental?'

For me, though, I always ask: progress for whom?

And generally the person performing the analysis in favor of progress is measuring progress in terms of what's good for themself.

I guess that I can only speak for myself but I’m not optimistic. Apparently, not even my ultimate authority (Pinker?) can convince me to believe in inevitable betterment over time

So it’s quite possible to say that progress is an irrational faith and a myth, and also accept steady scientific advance

I really like what Kuhn is saying. Is that from "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions?" Maybe I should get around to reading it.

Then someone figures out a new farming technique that further boosts productivity, and humans are able to store knowledge and teach future generations about this improved technique. It's an inevitable consequence of our ability to learn and teach.

... assumes the aim is merely to solve puzzles. What if the aim were to increase human welfare? In what sense does merely finding the solution to a puzzle guarantee progress? Not all scientific investigations are ethical, but their results would have solved problems, so if solving problems equates to progress then why do we shy away from unethical investigations?

Thomas Kuhn said there is progress in science. What he meant wasn’t that there is a cumulative, logical or dialectical advance that for the most part includes the context of older theories within. the newer ones , but rather the ability to ‘solve more puzzles’, even as the meanings of the scientific concepts which define these puzzles change with each shift in paradigm.
What if we were to assume for the sake of argument that science is inextricably intertwined with the rest of culture, and that if Kuhn is right about scientific progress as development of puzzle solving, then cultural progress as a whole is a kind of progressive puzzle solving.

What does it mean to solve a puzzle? Let me offer the following definition. Cultural problem solving is not about accurately representing an independent world. It is about construing and reconstruing our relation to the social and natural world from our own perspective in ways that allow us to see the behavior and thinking of other people in increasingly integral ways. Progress in cultural
problem solving is about anticipating the actions and motives of others (and ourselves) in ways that transcend concepts like evil or selfish intent. It is not that we become more
moral or more rational over time (Pinker’s claim is that the formation of the scientific method made us more rational). We were always moral and rational in the sense that we have always been motivated to solve puzzles. What progress in puzzle solving allows us to do is to see others as like ourselves on more and more dimensions of similarity.
So I think Pinker is right that there is a trajectory of development that leads toward less violence and conflict, but he is wrong to define it in relation to conformity to a certain Enlightenment and Eurocentric-based notion of empirical rationality.

How is it that this increase in puzzle solving leads to a decrease in violence? If science enables us to do, and what we want to do is kill, then we have some pretty obvious examples of science helping us to do exactly tha

So instead of developing the smelting of iron, only to lose it in the face of environmental disaster, disease, or war, we kept that skill and then went onto invent airplanes and so forth

... and so we ignore the achievements of the Enlightenment at our peril.

war, scarcity, disease, ignorance, and lethal menace

As I see it humans are making progress like Dutch Elm disease, thriving and growing and spreading until it wipes out all the Elms, and then itself.

You talk of humans as if they're the epitome of life.

Do I?

Rumor has it they tend to be selfish.

I said it was a rumor, not that it was God's Truth.

The critical issue here is the origin and nature of motive: what we want to do and why we want to do it. If we explain motive on the basis of arbitrary mechanism( evolutionarily shaped drive, reinforcement, etc) then we’ve lost the battle before it’s begun. We just throw up our hands and say motive is arbitrary and relative. If instead we make motive a function and product of sense-making , and understand sense-making to be a holistic process of erecting, testing and modifying a system of constructs designed to anticipate events with no ulterior or higher motive or purpose other than anticipation itself, then we can unite motive and intelligibility.

I think what I see, from the advances of science, is an increase in ability to do exactly what we want -- and what we want isn't always non violent. So, contrary to a decrease, I'd say we have an increase in violence because we're better at it

You overlooked the possibility that our demise might allow some other species to flourish, and therefore the airplane very well may be a stepping stone to something amazing. I think that's because you think the end of us is the end of everything.

I think you have lost track of the argument.The demise of the dinosaurs made room for the age of mammals. This is not a progression but a succession.

Violent: violate. Do we want to violate? Is that a motive? Can we be motivated to violate ourselves, or is that an incoherent idea?

If we establish that want, need, motive, desire is always in service of the prevention of a loss of personal integrity, and is itself the pursuit of self-validation,

then the question becomes how we we understand the separation between self and other. If we don’t want to destroy self but are motivated to kill others, is this not in fact our need to kill or destroy what we see as alien within the other?

Isn’t our perception of the alienness of others relative
to ourselves directly correlated with our motives of altruism, kindness and selflessness vs desire to punish, harm and kill
others? We sacrifice ourselves for loved ones and of to war against those we demonize as the dangerously alien.

Epicurus offers a classification of desires into three types: some are natural, others are empty; and natural desires are of two sorts, those that are necessary and those that are merely natural (see Cooper 1999).

It seems to me assuming the existence of a motive to kill misses the central issue here, which isn’t about desiring violence for its own sake but about the challenges we face in recognizing the value in others different from ourselves, and in thus avoiding the tendency to see malevolent motives (like the desire to kill) in the struggles of others to protect themselves and the community they identity with from what they perceive as harmful ideas and behavior.

Maybe if it were possible for us to step back far enough we'd clearly see the Truth of Eternal Recurrence. Everyone's experienced déjà vu, after all. How much more proof do we need?

But what I'm highlighting is that there are also sadists. And it's possible to set up a social world where those who get off on kindness go to the kind spaces, and those who get off on violence go to the violent spaces

Cultural problem solving is not about accurately representing an independent world. It is about construing and reconstruing our relation to the social and natural world from our own perspective in ways that allow us to see the behavior and thinking of other people in increasingly integral ways. Progress in cultural
problem solving is about anticipating the actions and motives of others (and ourselves) in ways that transcend concepts like evil or selfish intent. It is not that we become more
moral or more rational over time (Pinker’s claim is that the formation of the scientific method made us more rational). We were always moral and rational in the sense that we have always been motivated to solve puzzles. What progress in puzzle solving allows us to do is to see others as like ourselves on more and more dimensions of similarity.

The point that I was trying to make is that a religious community and traditionalism in general is constraining, both in openness to new ideas and in moral development. That’s not to say that progressivism is better than conservatism, it’s just pointing out the difference. An independent can defy a group and the leader of a group if what they’re doing is judged to be immoral.

Well, maybe you can help me figure out who my ultimate authority is. I may get a clue if you would share who your ultimate authority is.

Maybe if it were possible for us to step back far enough we'd clearly see the Truth of Eternal Recurrence. Everyone's experienced déjà vu, after all. How much more proof do we need?

I don't disagree, but I'm not convinced that you aren't saying one is better than the other.

I'm not convinced that to be constrained is inherently a bad thing.

How would that help you? I don't get it.

how have the "primitive conditions" he lists, namely "war, scarcity, disease, ignorance, and lethal menace," actually been alleviated or overcome by "Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress"?

he 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.

Big question: what does the following look like in action -
Progress in cultural problem solving is about anticipating the actions and motives of others (and ourselves) in ways that transcend concepts like evil or selfish intent.

It's not just writing

But what he really means is that even if we do still suffer from some of those evils, they are relics. We are on the forward march, and it's only a matter of time before we consign them to the dustbin of history.

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

I think we commonly mistake the definition of "primitive" as the past. I actually was first confused as to the use of the word when I came across the word in philosophy. I think in philosophy, primitive means basic and simple, as in the ordinary means of dealing with things. (I don't know, I'm trying to get to the definition that sounds satisfactory).

The problem I have with that thinking is that it is impossible to separate science from the rest of culture. Changes in scientific thought run parallel with changes in ideas in the arts, politics, philosophy, moral theory, because they are all inexo intermeshed. If we’re going to argue that progress occurs in science and technology, then we have to concede that it takes place as a general feature of cultural history.

The worldviews we erect to organize our sense-making define the nature and boundaries of what is ethically permissible or unjust.

Seems reasonable. Before I do it myself, can anyone see how to save my original analysis?

1. If something improves, e.g., the eradication of guinea worm disease, it happens in time, going from worse to better. The past condition is worse, closer to the beginning of a progressive development and thereby primitive.

2. If it gets worse again, this can rightfully be called a slide back to a primitive condition.

3. Many very important things have improved in tandem.

4. These things improved in tandem thanks to a way of thinking and a way of going about things.

5. If these things get worse again in the present and future, this can rightfully be called a general slide back to primitive conditions.

6. We have to maintain [s]the successful way of thinking[/s] the styles of thought and practice of the Enlightenment to prevent such a general slide back.

6a: there is only one system of values which prevents such a general slide back.
6b: that system of values is "the styles of thought and practice of the Enlightenment".

Seems reasonable. Before I do it myself, can anyone see how to save my original analysis?

If something improves, e.g., the eradication of guinea worm disease, it happens in time, going from worse to better. The past condition is worse, closer to the beginning of a progressive development and thereby primitive.

I think your argument was that airplanes are the product of a diseased breed, so it's foolish to think of them as progress.

I'm sorry if it wasn't clear. A species, such as Elm disease, that destroys its environment will not last long. Aeroplanes are part of the fossil fuel dependent culture that cannot long continue and will die out.

Looking for Progress and her sister, Endless Growth, is a wretched mistake that leads to the cliff edge

I am likening humanity to a species that we call a disease, that has not established a stable relationship with its environment but undermines it. I am arguing that this undermining is what we call progress in our own case.

I agree with this assessment. What's at issue is whether progress is exclusively a threat which must be abandoned, or if it's the solution to the problems we face.

Seems reasonable. Before I do it myself, can anyone see how to save my original analysis?

But is that like saying that since knives are used to kill, and killers are destroying their own world, knives are inherently self undermining?

The worldviews we erect to organize our sense-making define the nature and boundaries of what is ethically permissible or unjust.
— Joshs

I think that's nonsense, and quite evidently so. Ethical judgements tend to involve quite different parts of the brain than might be involved in sense-making, and most precede any such activity by many years developmentally, and by many milliseconds in processing terms. I just don't see any evidence whatsoever to back up such a theory.

“The inextricability of feeling and world-experience is not adequately acknowledged by philosophical approaches that impose, from the outset, a crisp distinction between bodily feeling and world-directed intentionality. Most philosophers admit that emotions incorporate both world-directedness and bodily feeling but they construe the two as separate ingredients. Some have argued that feelings can be world-directed. But, in so doing, they still retain the internal– external contrast and so fail, to some degree at least, to respect the relevant phenomenology. For example, Prinz (2004) argues that feelings can be about things other than the body but he adopts a non-phenomenological conception of intentionality and continues to assume that the phenomenology of feeling is internal in character.”

“At the neural level, brain systems traditionally seen as subserving separate functions of appraisal and emotion are inextricably interconnected. Hence ‘appraisal’ and ‘emotion’ cannot be mapped onto separate brain systems.” Pessoa (2008) provides extensive evidence from neuroscience that supports this view of the neural underpinnings of emotion and cognition. He presents three converging lines of evidence:

(1) brain regions previously viewed as ‘affective’ are also involved in cognition; (2) brain regions previously
viewed as ‘cognitive’ are also involved in emotion; and (3) the neural processes subserving
emotion and cognition are integrated and thus non-modular.”

”Sense-making comprises emotion as much as cognition. The enactive approach does not view cognition and emotion as separate systems, but treats them as thoroughly integrated at biological, psychological, and phenomenological levels. The spatial containment language of internal/external or inside/outside (which frames the internalist/externalist debate) is inappropriate and misleading for understanding the peculiar sort of relationality belonging to intentionality, the lived body, or
being-in-the-world. As Heidegger says, a living being is ‘in’ its world in a completely different sense from that of water being in a glass (Heidegger 1995, pp. 165–166)
“...appraisal and emotion processes are thoroughly interdependent at both psychological and neural
levels (see also Colombetti and Thompson 2005). At the psychological level, one is not a mere means to the other (as in the idea that an appraisal is a means to the having of an emotion, and vice-versa); rather, they form an integrated and self-organizing emotion-appraisal state, an ‘emotional interpretation.’(Thompson 2009)

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.

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

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

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.

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

That's a powerful point.

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.

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.

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.

Then toward what is it progressing?

Just means development.

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

Think of a convergent progression in math.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

I've run out of steam on this topic.

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

I've run out of steam on this topic.

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

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.

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.

"If you wish to draw pleasure out of life, You must attach value to the world."

...the prosperity of some nations is bought at the expense of others...

After all, would anyone posit that it would be bad for things to get better?

Not sure what your point is here. My purpose was to point out that "progress" is an attitude rather than a fact, that Pinker's error is to treat it as a fact, an error that ?Jamal
to some extent shares in his criticism of Pinker.

Then progress must include all. Perhaps we can do better. That this has been undoubtedly the case in the past leads conservative thinkers to conclude that it must always be so. But must it?

If you haven’t read it already, I’d recommend Graeber and Wengrow’s Dawn of Everything. It is a critique of Darwinist progressive accounts of anthropological change as seen in Pinker, Diamond and Harari. Graeber shares your moralist individualism, asserting that each culture in each era of history makes valuative choices ( equality-inequality, hierarchy- nonhierarchy, statist- non statist) above and beyond geographical, technological and other material determinants.

I was merely pointing out that there is a distinction between the defeatist attitude that it is impossible, the optimistic attitude that it is possible, and the complacent attitude that it is inevitable.

I think where people sit on this has a lot to do with their aesthetics and politics more than anything. For instance, it seems that there are many people who have an understandable critical antipathy towards capitalism and though this lens it is almost impossible to see a version of the world that is not one of ceaseless exploitation, degradation and suffering.

I asked him if he believed in progress. "Fuck yeah!" he responded. 'But we're only part of the way there.' Progress is situational and specific and never completed and can't be understood as some kind of Hegelian process.

Would many people deny that progress in the sense of social betterment, fairness and justice and greater prosperity for all is desirable?

From some ethical and aesthetical perspectives, there is certainly something ugly, something degraded, about capitalism

The question is whether he meant to say that he believed in the ideal of progress

I think the problem is that progress is hard to define and aligned with worldviews. Hence the internecine battles between 'progressives' and conservatives.

I think the notion of the ideal of progress was not overtly a part of his worldview. But he did feel there was some, shall we say 'transcendent' aspect of improvement built into human spirituality.

I'm curious to know what a " 'transcendent' aspect of improvement built into human spirituality' would look like to your friend

wouldn't social justice and universal prosperity (and the other benefits that go with those) be in common, with the differences being more in the way of how to get there?

It's likely to be Aboriginal culture/spirituality, which I don't pretend to understand but it is hinting at human nature having an openness to goodness as a dimension of how we were created. This is put together from longer conversations.

Yep. I think many human problems come down to how we get there. Just as morality is not a theory, it is what we do.

I think this is the harm of 'the myth of progress'. It takes progress as the primary objective and sustainability as a kind of 'nice to have' icing on the cake. But sustainability, and equality, should be the constraints on any progress bar none, meaning no 'progress' which doesn't meet these criteria should take place.

Taking sustainability and equality seriously means remaining in our apocryphal 'mud huts' for ten thousand years if necessary until we innovate the centrally heated, air conditioned bungalow in a form which is available to everyone, regardless of their status, and does not take more from its environment than it can sustain in its lifetime.

an openness to goodness as a dimension of how we were created.

Would many people deny that progress in the sense of social betterment, fairness and justice and greater prosperity for all is desirable?

There is a tendency to polarize ideas of human nature; either it is a Good Thing (Rouseau) or a Bad Thing (Hobbes). But either view is mistaken.

Very few would deny that. But there would be different and competing interpretations of what they mean. People will always defend what they have and usually look for improvement from where they are.

What you describe is classic Western dualistic thinking and this bifurcated view of reality is, I agree, unproductive.

It is easy to advocate for social justice and fairness and prosperity for all as an ideal; the actuality may be far less appealing to the side that currently enjoys the prosperity.

I think it's more a case of disagreement over how to get there than disagreement over what they mean.

In a way, sustainability enforces itself. Unsustainable activity can't last forever. When the crash comes, there is turmoil and after a while, we start again. Maybe we avoid some of the mistakes that caused the crash. We will certainly make some new ones.

Equality is a different matter. It may well be ideal, but I suspect that the best we can expect is tolerable inequality. "Tolerable" requires the power elite in a political system to recognize when they need to bend with the wind of popular discontent.

It's solidarity that's the problem. Hence the main focus of any institution of power is to divide.

So a technology for which we can see we'll run out of the main fuel, or run out of capacity to hold the waste product, is a technology that doesn't work. Back to the drawing board.

Un-foreseeable lack of sustainability is obviously going to be part of any technological innovation in a complex world, but we're dealing, in the most part, with completely foreseeable issues.

It's solidarity that's the problem. Hence the main focus of any institution of power is to divide.

Wise words.

you don't mention a third category, issues that are foreseeable but not foreseen. For whatever reason.

people may prefer kicking the can down the road to the inevitably disruptive process of re-design.

Power structures can fall apart because of internal disunity. They need their own support to remain united.

The 'disruption' is a bogeyman.

It's pathetic that the left can't even muster enough solidarity to make a dent.

I had in mind people losing their jobs and even careers. The new jobs are often lower paid, lower status, somewhere else and so on. It is serious. It may still be worth it, but it needs good, sympathetic management, which doesn't usually seem to be provided - not even by those who profit from the change.

Tell me about it. It seems to be part of the left-wing personality that compromise in the name of solidarity is regarded as betrayal.