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. — Noble Dust
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. — Isaac
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? — Judaka
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. — Tom Storm
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. — frank
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. — Noble Dust
I totally forgot about notions of the evolving consciousness of human beings. — Tom Storm
Yes. I hold to this too. — Tom Storm
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 — Noble Dust
It's something we should probably explore further in other threads, given the courage. — Noble Dust
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. — Jamal
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). — Jamal
What you cynically call magic and assumption is simply a belief in charts that plot points and show progress. — Judaka
But then, it's also undeniable that there has been progress, that there is a direction to history. — T Clark
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. — Judaka
I’m not going to address the evidence here, at least not yet. — Jamal
Let’s start with technology and science. Do you think we can reasonably say there has been progress in either of these fields? — Joshs
Why are you being difficult? You're well aware of the significant medical, legal, scientific, and economic improvements over the last few centuries. — Judaka
Why should I play this game with you? — Judaka
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. — Judaka
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'? — Isaac
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. — Jamal
Net improvements? — Isaac
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. — Joshs
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. — Jamal
if the starting point is the extended family/tribe, the smallest viable group, there are only extinction, stasis, or enlargement as options. — unenlightened
You forgot to mention that the purpose, meaning, and value within it are shared.
— praxis
No I didn't, I mentioned that. — Noble Dust
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. — Jamal
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. — Jamal
the result of solving those problems must inevitably be progress.” — Joshs
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