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
The undeniability of progress is easily overstated, especially by those who believe they have made the most, - 'that surely cannot have been accidental?' — unenlightened
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
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
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
... 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
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
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
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
... and so we ignore the achievements of the Enlightenment at our peril. — Steven Pinker
war, scarcity, disease, ignorance, and lethal menace — Steven Pinker
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
Do I? — unenlightened
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
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
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. — unenlightened
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
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
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. — Joshs
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
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