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

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.

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

Point taken, and I agree.

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

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. I think there are progresses here and there, and they don't always go together. So if we say that progress is probable, I think we're already assuming an all-encompassing trend that I am sceptical about.

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).

I don't think the latter part of the OP is self-flagellation. It's more a reaction to this self-satisfied glorification of general progress, which amounts to a brushing off of moral outrages. I've experienced this on the forum. Criticism of the violent transition from peasantry to proletariat will be met with knee-jerk reactions like "do you really want to return to back-breaking labour in muddy fields," etc. That is, it is taken as a claim that the past was better, and I think this is very revealing. And it is common enough for me to fairly identify it as a significantly prevalent way of thinking. A better attitude would be to embrace the critique of progress as myth, with a view to advancing particular progresses.

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.

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

Thanks for the clarification. Well, of course this is a huge topic, and I don't want to derail the thread. I'll try to respond succinctly. I probably won't get to everything that's actually on my mind. (I sound like @T Clark).

How do I approach evaluating beliefs? I don't know if I evaluate them much to begin with; rather, I take a pretty psychological approach in which I try to observe and gain some understanding of why people think the way they do and believe what they believe. 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'm not even trying to get into whether that world is real or not; objective or subjective. But if you observe people in life, you will notice that certain people live within mental narratives that confirm implicit biases. Each of us in our own world. Again, with the (failed) attempt to be brief, I'm not arguing for solipsism. I'd rather not go into that, but can if needed.

The quote button isn't working, so in regards to this:

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'm much more conflicted about this. Ultimately, I do see progress as being real. But not in the sense that the enlightenment narrative situates it. I think there's a possibility of the expansion of consciousness that could signify a real form of progress. If that sounds woo-woo, consider the millions of years of evolution that have lead to where we are now: life is finally aware of itself for the first time. We seem to be in infancy of conscious experience.

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

The word doesn't come from their fiber; of course not. but the concept is indeed in their fiber. Pedantry gone wrong in your case.

I'll just be over here in the corner.

That's very helpful. Thanks. I totally forgot about notions of the evolving consciousness of human beings.

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

Yes. I hold to this too.

Feel free to come back to the center at any time.

I totally forgot about notions of the evolving consciousness of human beings. — 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. Incidentally, if you are being sarcastic, I tip my hat to you like a fedora wearing atheist (of which I am not).

Yes. I hold to this too. — Tom Storm

I love this concept, albeit in a terrified way. It's something we should probably explore further in other threads, given the courage.

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

I generally don't do sarcasm on line. I was sincerely referring to my completely missing an obvious aspect to this discussion about Enlightenment. I do wear a felt hat - it's fuckin' Australia, Mate!

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

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

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

That's a thing?

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

I was riffing, but maybe we should start a thread. I'm unfamiliar with Lakoff; will look into it.

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

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.

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

So, is your goal to discredit the trend because you dislike the attitude of those who bring it up? I do share the sentiments you've expressed here. Sometimes people go too far in acting as though the West is a blight on the world and these stats need to be brought up, but more often they're brought up to defend our current way of doing things, especially capitalism. It is very ironic to use the supposed accomplishments of enlightenment values as a way to shield them from criticism. We should be free to criticise and analyse anything and everything so that we can search for areas of possible improvement.

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

I can see why you are calling it cynical—it looks like I’ve tried to sneak it through—but I think it’s a bit more substantial than that. In describing the view as “that there is an overarching general progress in history, like a magical power standing over society,” without acknowledging that we could accept an overarching general progress which is not a magical power standing over society, I mean that as things play out in discourse, the former effectively implies the latter. That is, there is no view of history as Progress that is not imposing a myth.

You will say that Pinker’s evidence shows this to be false, but I’m not going to address the evidence here, at least not yet. I may say more in the near or middle future.

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.

If you desire to discredit the pomposity and self-congratulations then make it your target... don't go after something so well-evidenced that even a flat Earther would steer clear. I've made your mistake in the past, when you see the same concept being invoked over and over as evidence for positions you hate, it creates a motivation to take this tool away which muddies your judgement. Your starting position was to find a flaw in this notion of inevitable progress, was it not?

But then, it's also undeniable that there has been progress, that there is a direction to history. — T Clark

if the starting point is the extended family/tribe, the smallest viable group, there are only extinction, stasis, or enlargement as options. If the starting point is knowledge learned in a single lifetime, there are only the same options. What some see as progress, can be equally explained as a drunkard's walk. Set a bunch of drunks on a cliff edge on a dark night, and in the morning, nearly all the survivors will have moved away from the cliff.

By the next morning, alcohol being equally available, a few more will have wandered back to the cliff and fallen, and a few will have moved further away from the cliff.

The question for the compassionate thought experimenter is whether there might not be another cliff the other side of the island that they are moving towards. It's very early days for the survival of the enlightenment.

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

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

I'll bite, if that's not treading on anyone's toes too much.

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

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

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? Do you actually want to take Jamal's side and tell me that there is no general progress throughout history? How far back do you want to go that you could even entertain wanting to have a discussion about this?

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'?

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

Net improvements? It's easy to prove an improvement if you're selective about which negative consequences you're going to include, and over what timescale you're going to measure that improvement. If I rob a bank, killing all the staff and then spend the money on a new yacht my life will have improved .. if I ignore the consequences of my actions and put the future possibility of being caught as merely hypothetical.

Why should I play this game with you? — Judaka

I thought we were on a discussion forum. Have I pasted the comment into the wrong website?

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

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.

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

Kuhn said “In its normal state, then, a scientific community is an immensely efficient instrument for solving the problems or puzzles that its paradigms define. Furthermore, the result of solving those problems must inevitably be progress.”

He goes on to ask “Why should progress also be the apparently universal concomitant of scientific revolutions?”
After all, “the member of a mature scientific community is, like the typical character of Orwell's 1984, the victim of a history rewritten by the powers that be.”

His answer is the following:

“Later scientific theories are better than earlier ones for solving puzzles in the often quite different environments to which they are applied. That is not a relativist's position, and it displays the sense in which I am a convinced believer in scientific progress.”

“Imagine an evolutionary tree representing the development of the modern scientific specialties from their common origins in, say, primitive natural philosophy and the crafts. A line drawn up that tree, never doubling back, from the trunk to the tip of some branch would trace a succession of theories related by descent. Considering any two such theories, chosen from points not too near their origin, it should be easy to design a list of criteria that would enable an uncommitted observer to distinguish the earlier from the more recent theory time after time. Among the most useful would be: accuracy of prediction, particularly of quantitative prediction; the balance between esoteric and everyday subject matter; and the number of different problems solved. Less useful for this purpose, though also important determinants of scientific life, would be such values as simplicity, scope, and compatibility with other specialties.”

I’ll butt in here to note that 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.

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

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.

Heh, I didn't agree to discuss any topic any other poster suggests.

Net improvements? — Isaac

I've got no idea what you're talking about lol. What kind of cost do you want to be included?

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

Nope.

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

I don’t particularly admire Pinker and wasn’t jumping to his defense. I just don’t remember his argument for progress being elevated to capital P Progress or claiming inevitable betterment over time.

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

But for hundreds of thousands of years, our species acquired skills only to lose them again. Stasis was the rule.

Something unusual happened about 60,000 years ago so that we started maintaining skills over time, allowing for accumulation and advancement.

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

I don't expect a response, just pointing out that progress isn't accidental for us. The conditions that set us in the path to progress may have been accidental, but ever since then, we've been taking the world into our own hands.

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

No I didn't, I mentioned that. — Noble Dust

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.

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.

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.

I'll take the position that there is no scientific progress.

I don't see it as so obvious to call it progress, though I understand why people say there is such a thing. We can see differences between time periods from the evidence available to us, and then we go and look for things we like more now that exist today that didn't exist yesterday, or we can look for things we dislike that used to exist and no longer exist. This provides a working understanding of the word "better" or "progress", regardless of whether we believe history is a real thing that can actually progress.

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.

Progress is relative to social position. Even as we've gotten more powerful, slavery is still a part of the world economic system: And that's gotta be one of the few "bads" that people will concede is a bad that shouldn't be no matter what and we're better off today because of it's no longer around. But, really, it's just no longer around within particular nation borders (and, *really* really, human trafficking still occurs across borders into liberal, capitalist nations, sometimes for labor and sometimes for sex)

So, no -- what I see is scientific regress. We're better and more able to help the well-to-do while we use the not-so-good-off, which doesn't look that different from building pyramids to me, but now with the ability to end not just our own empire but all of human life.

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

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.

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

Generally, my idea of progress would be degrowth/sustainability and a shift in values towards well-being over materialism. Not a popular view, even with myself if I’m honest.

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

... 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?