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

Isn't that all progress is, an inevitable reflection of the fact that we can talk to the past and use the knowledge they give us and talk to the future and give them the knowledge we have now? It all comes down to written language.

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

I don't think that's right, or at least it's not all there is to say. History is directional because the present can build on the foundation laid by the past. We're not smarter, or at least not much smarter, than humans were 100 years ago or 1,000 years ago or 100,000 years ago.

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

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. — Moliere

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 — praxis

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

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.

Seems to me that one of the problems showing up in this discussion relates to whether "progress" means things are getting better or just that history is directional - that current knowledge can build on past knowledge.

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

Yes, it’s from the Postscript that he added to the book 10 years after it was originally published. It was designed as a response to the charges of relativism leveled at his approach.

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

I’m in the middle of a book which theorizes that hunter gatherer’s had to be forced into agriculture because it was a much less desirable lifestyle. People were basically forced because armies were needed. For the masses, it’s only been relatively recently that it’s all been worth it. But now the masses feel, or rather complain about, the negative effects of calorie rich foods and foods they’re not well adapted to such as grains, legumes, and nightshades. Plus all the other toxins we’re exposed to. Most Americans are overweight and on some kind of medication. Not to mention our general sense of well-being.

That’s progress?

... 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? — Isaac

Kuhn’s assumption that one could separate off the aims and methods of science from the rest of culture made it impossible for him to answer this question. Rorty critiqued Kuhn for trying to seal off science in its own hermetically sealed epistemological chamber m, with its own ethics of goodness in puzzle solving. Rorty realized that empirical puzzle solving is a subset of wider cultural sense-making motives that organize the world in terms of whether , as well as the way things are intelligible, recognizable, assimilable.
The worldviews we erect to organize our sense-making define the nature and boundaries of what is ethically permissible or unjust.

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. — Joshs

Glad to find something we can debate.

While progress in puzzle solving allows us to do, it's very much up to us what we do, what counts as a puzzle, and what counts as a solution. I believe you'd agree with me this far.

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 that. Is it really just a numbers game of relative population rates across time?

@Jamal
I read your Pinker quote differently than you, but your Nietzsche quote exactly as you interpreted Pinker.

I read Pinker to offer hope to those who despair that there is no progress based upon our constant regress to our most evil inclinations. That progress is evidenced by the Enlightenment.

That is, should you sit on your porch thinking about how terrible the human condition is, never able to overcome irs worst impulses, but condemned to repeat it, don't despair says Pinker: We have come a long way in some regards.

I don't read this single excerpt to suggest that heaven awaits someday, that the power of fate will lead us there without our effort, or that the invisible hand of goodness assures us if our deliverance from evil.

That imparts a very Christiancentric interpretation upon Pinker, which I think is more applicable to Nietzsche.

That is, I don't read Pinker to suggest that the Enlightenment was an inevitable evolutionary state that we were destined to achieve without great effort, and I think he explicitly realizes we can fall well beneath those principles, but there is an optimism to Pinker. I just don't think it's a naive or dangerous one.

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 — Moliere

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.

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 — frank

Yes. things start from almost nothing and either die out or get better. But you mention aeroplanes as if they are unequivocally progressive and not one of the things that may be heading us towards extinction. 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.

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

I read this as a warning rather than complacency. The success we enjoy against

war, scarcity, disease, ignorance, and lethal menace — Steven Pinker

is not a permanent victory. Although the Enlightenment program, the conquest of nature, is not unproblematic, it is only by continued concerted effort that the progress that has be made against war, scarcity, etc. will be sustained.

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. — unenlightened

You talk of humans as if they're the epitome of life. Who knows what glorious six legged creatures require our particular ashes in order to take off and become galactic explorers?

You aren't truly pessimistic until you rejoice in it. You're just jaded.

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

Do I?

Do I? — unenlightened

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.

That's just his genes talking. Rumor has it they tend to be selfish.

Rumor has it they tend to be selfish. — praxis

Humans?

Hey @Noble Dust Is Dawkins my Ultimate Authority?

That's pseudo-science

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

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

It's opposed to evolutionary biology. That trumps whatever God was going to say.

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. — Joshs

And could we not be motivated to kill? Could it not even be intelligible? "We had to drop the bomb on Hiroshima because..." is the phrase I have in mind. There are many becauses. The motive is clear. And science did it. And this isn't even in one of those unintended consequences ways: it was a driving motive of many scientists on the project to win the war.

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. We even compartmentalize it to different functions within the state so that others don't have to deal with it.

Is that really a decrease in violence?

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 — Moliere

Violent: violate. Do we want to violate? Is that a motive? Can we be motivated to violate ourselves, or is that an incoherent idea? One might jump in here and mention suicide, self-harm, masochism. But is pain and destruction the motive in these case or a means to an end which is the very opposite of self-destruction? Many psychologists have explained one central motive for suicide as an attempt at self-affirmation. 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 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 go to war against those we demonize as the dangerously alien.

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.

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. — frank

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.

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. — unenlightened

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

The sun of optimism can never bring light to pessimism. That bitterness is a black hole.

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

I'm tempted to double down, but it's more interesting to me to not. Let's say we don't want to violate others or self as a motive on pain of an incoherent notion of motive.

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, — Joshs

Interesting. Can it be established?

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?

I actually want to answer this one different from the next, though it feels like a chain of thought.

I think it's possible to want to violate. Wanting an action to an object is a form of fantasy: I want to climb that mountain. I want to run 6 miles. I want to punch my boss.

However, what you've brought up is that the "I want..." is not a motive, per se -- and that's a fair point too I believe.

I've been loose in using "I want" so far.

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.

I'm going to try and clean up desire a bit here from merely stating "I want..."

I like to start from a tripartite division of desire into types, taking after an interpretation of Epicurus:

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).

We don't have to use this terminology, I'm only sharing it as a way of saying where I'm coming from in my response.

I'd say that the sorts of motivations you are describing fall within the natural and unnecessary category: which is where it seems most of psychology actually takes place, so it's almost too convenient for us to adopt Epicurus' rough thought "these desires are OK enough until they cause too much anxiety" in our modern world sense. (it's not like people are actually looking for ataraxia, for the most part)

But, here's where I have a reason to doubt -- those sorts of desires don't follow structures as clean as "Our preception of the alienness of others in relation to our self is directly correlated with our motives of altruism, kindness and selflessness vs desire to punish, harm and kill others" suggests to my mind.

Or, at least, there's enough information going on in that sentence that I don't want to just say "Oh, yes, of course"

Motives:

Altruism/pushishment
kindness/harm
selflessness/kill

Roughly. I'm just using your sentence to structure some dyads.


I'm going a little formal here just to see if it sticks. If it doesn't then by all means skip. I'm mostly hoping to not go down a romantic hole in regards to the warrior -- yes, of course, there are self-sacrificing people. 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.

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. — Joshs

Fair. I'm fine with dropping the assumption. Maybe some of the above will progress our thoughts.

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?

Hey @Noble Dust Maybe Nietzsche is my Ultimate Authority?

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? — praxis

Except that Eternal Recurrence for Nietzsche is the recurrence of the absolutely different. Kind of the opposite of deja vu.

I finally get it, thanks! I'm my own Ultimate Authority.