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 — Moliere

i have the same problem with the label sadist as I do with the concept of a motive to kill. 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.

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. — Joshs

This is fascinating. 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.

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. — praxis

I don't disagree, but I'm not convinced that you aren't saying one is better than the other. And I'm not convinced that to be constrained is inherently a bad thing.

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. — praxis

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

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

There's a little underground railway between the Eternal Return and Kierkegaard's Repetition.

The charge to board that train is 5 euros.

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

I suppose that I could list all the traditions in life that I think are fine. It would be a long list.

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

I'm pretty sure that I suggested it can be bad when tradition is abused.

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

You don't need to get it. I got it. I am my Ultimate Authority, and that's every bit as silly as it sounds.

Now if you'll excuse me I have a train to catch.

Au revoir.

Is "Progress: an insufferable enthusiasm"?

Interesting topic and already 6 pages of discussion, which I haven't read. So...

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"? — Jamal

Primitive conditions have been eliminated here and there, for a time, for some people. If one happens to be at the right place, time and people, then the culture will seem to have progressed. Unfortunately, in lots of places, much of the time, and for many people not too much abatement of the primitive has occurred.

Why not?

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. — Jamal

You seem to be suggesting that "primitive conditions" are the result of crimes of commission, sinfulness, evil, etc. Of course, one can finger times, places, and people where crime sin, evil, etc. has been regnant. World wars, genocides, great leaps forward, many forms of organized oppression.

One could attribute all of our suffering to the venality, greed, selfishness, shortsightedness, pig headedness, corruptibility, invincible stupidity, feral viciousness, and MORE of humans. All that is true, I think, and we can do no other in the long run.

We are the species we are. As far back as we can see. Global warming may in time (but not far distant) return us all to a quite primitive state, complete with much suffering. Are we to blame?

Global warming is the result of our discovery that hydrocarbons were a really terrific energy source which beat out the alternatives. We have never been the sort of species that would discover hydrocarbons and then pause for a few decades to consider carefully what the consequences might be of using coal, oil, and natural gas like water.

The coal and oil were there for the taking! Burn, baby, burn, Drill, baby, drill. Even though we now know what we are doing to our only home, most of us who use a lot of hydrocarbons are very unenthusiastic about changing our way of life very much. We are just not that kind of species.

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. — Tom Storm

I’m going to be lazy and use my reply to Moliere:

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.

It's not just writing but yes, I agree that writing pretty much guarantees an inevitability of progress.


Truth is something we make, you can choose what to emphasise, how to interpret and characterise the points you deem relevant and reach the conclusion you like. If progress is just, things getting "better", and there's no agreed-upon standard for what's better, then there is no answer we should all agree on.

It's not just writing — Judaka

Agreed. I oversimplified a bit.

Pinker is a bit of a prat. But having said that, one of the exercises I used to do with kids (adolescents) was to have them respond to his TED talk. What stood out to me was that the kids were pretty much resigned to things getting worse, that this is what they had been told, and being told by Pinker that things were getting better was a novelty.

Of course there were different reactions to this, from intense criticism of Pinker's optimism to expressions of relief at the idea that things might actually improve.

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.

At the end of the day we’re all slaves to our conditioning and ideologies. If someone is clever enough to press our buttons they’ll press them, because that’s how the world is, wrapped in a swirl of power struggling. We’re fucked.

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. — Jamal

I didn't get this from the passage. Of course I haven't read Pinker, but the passage, to me, did not mean they are relics. He said they are a part of natural existence and countries can slide back to them - at the expense of the wisdom of the Enlightenment. So, in essence he doesn't expect those evils to go away, but only to become latent. He used the word "pacified" at one point in his works (?)

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).

Anyway, very good OP!

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

That's a powerful point.

I wonder if my objection to “primitive conditions” is a trivial one, dressed up as a profundity. This is indeed how Pinker views the criticism of the idea of progress. Let’s see…

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 the successful way of thinking and going about things to prevent such a general slide back.

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

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). — L'éléphant

Yes, I think in philosophy it could be contrasted with something like sophisticated. For example, naive realism might be described as primitive in that it’s not a consciously developed theory, just an unexamined belief. In contrast, some varieties of direct realism are worked out by philosophers, so they can be called sophisticated.

Similarly in phenomenology, maybe the natural attitude could be described as primitive, as opposed to philosophically deliberate bracketing.

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.

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. — Joshs

But although science cannot be separated from the rest of culture, it can be distinguished, and it can be intermeshed such that what we call progress in science is combined with regress or stasis elsewhere, such as in ethics. For example, Hiroshima. I think that’s Gray’s central point.

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.

Ethics might change over time as group dynamics put different thinking patterns in positions of influence, and some of that change might coincidentally take place as developments in technology or science have an impact on the centres of power in any group, but it's a tangential influence at best, and not a directed one.

Notwithstanding all that, the point I was making still stands even under your preferred model. Scientific investigations which are currently considered unethical by any society (regardless of how they came to that judgement) are not conducted. If it were true that all scientific problem-solving was default associated with human progress, then all scientific investigation would be default morally acceptable. It isn't.

We clearly have other preferences which compete with the value of scientific problem-solving, thus refuting the notion that the two can be equated without loss.

Did your answer disappear? :wink:

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

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. This maybe isn't quite Pinker's point. If I reformulate your argument with this in mind:

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 the successful way of thinking the styles of thought and practice of the Enlightenment to prevent such a general slide back.

If indeed that is Pinker's argument, there's at least three unstated premises.

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".

6a could be undermined by finding another system of values which would work, 6b could be attacked by showing there isn't a coherent system of Enlightenment thought+action, or that such values don't in fact cause improvement.

This also similarly modifies premise 4 - gotta make it specific to "Enlightenment" rather than "a way of thinking and a way of doing things".

I'd also find it plausible to argue that the "linearity" of progress isn't really demonstrated in your argument, it's construed. This concerns the final suppressed premise.

To call a condition primitive, or improved, the declaration must aggregate a historical moment into a state where it can be judged in a unitary fashion. An improvement in a particular way, or many particular ways, isn't the same concept as history itself having an improving, progressive tendency. As an example, dental care may've improved over time, so has processor speed, but a historical composite of dental care and processor speed don't summarise the progression of history together. There'd need to be a sufficiently broad range of trajectories "in tandem" (as you said) but with a theoretical guarantee they're representative of historical development in the abstract.

Thus this might That's perhaps an attack on premise 5 - a sleight of hand which turns a judgement of a plurality ("many things") into a judgement of a unitary thing ("primitive conditions").

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

At 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. — Jamal

Judging whether something is an improvement is itself a time-constrained activity. New techniques have consequences which reach far into the future (think climate change), and so the very act of declaring something an 'improvement' involves two aspects..

a) the timescale over which the supporting evidence is collected
b) the confidence in the assessment of any future consequences.

Both are lacking in Pinker's assessment of 'progress'

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

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. These are not the gods we should be worshiping. Choose instead diversity, resilience, interdependence and mutuality.

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.

Thank you both. I’ll reply soonish.

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. — unenlightened

You mean the petroleum dependent way of life is doomed. I agree.

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

But amazingly, it's the technology rich societies whose populations are decreasing. It's countries that allow education and opportunity to women who have the unprecedented problem of transitioning to a smaller labor force because women are becoming professionals instead of baby machines.

It appears that it would help the environment if this culture, which for the first time in history treats women as adult citizens, would spread and bring the global population down.

There are alternatives to petroleum. We're working on fusion power now. It's possible to maintain the infrastructure of global community which allows us the ability to help one another and fulfill the potential we see in our dreams. We don't have to go backwards.

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. — unenlightened

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.

This is where temperament comes into play, isn't it?

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. — frank

No. If you agree with the assessment that progress is self-undermining, you have already abandoned the concept of progress.

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

Doesn't your analysis assume there are no balancing unintended consequences that come with the improvement in conditions, e.g. the progress in technology has made it so the consequences of war are much more extensive and destructive. Isn't it also a bit circular - consequences are judged positive when compared to criteria based on Enlightenment values? Just because you and I share those values doesn't make them universal.

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

I think you have to argue that we'll never have the wisdom to use our power wisely. It comes back to your vision of humanity.

Note that when I referred to “my original analysis” I was referring to the OP. The numbered argument presented above is my not-very-thorough attempt to steelman my opponent, who I am thinking about calling “Pinkerton”.

With that out of the way, you’ve made some good points. I intend to come back to this discussion in the next few days.

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

No it isn't. You are trying to have your cake and eat it too. It doesn't matter where you look in the environment, runaway success doesn't last because it is unbalanced. And progress is unbalanced; it is always more, and never less. You think because I argue against progress, that I am arguing against knowledge, and science, and reason. But these are the associations that you make and Pinker makes, and they are not necessary connections. One can have power and restraint, but at the moment we don't.

If you want an analogy, it is like I am saying that there is no problem with our having an understanding of Nuclear fission, if we do not use it to destroy the environment and kill each other en masse. But as we are using it in those ways, there is a problem, and progress in having even more power will not solve that problem because our addiction to power is the problem.

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. — Isaac

Jesse Prinz argues that ethical values are derived from emotional dispositions that precede rational reflection. He divides the realm of subjective emotional sentiment from rational objectivity, supporting an “evaluatively neutral” empirical naturalism at the same time that he claims to maintain a relativistic stance on moral values. The resulting position is a mixture of objective rationalism and subjective relativism. According to Prinz, even though moral values are dependent on subjectively relative emotional dispositions, it is possible to determine one moral position as being objectively better than another on the basis of non-moral meta-empirical values such as consistency, universalizability and effects on well-being. Jonathan Haidt agrees with Prinz that ethical values originate in pre-cognitive emotional dispositions. For Haidt these inherited dispositions are present in all human beings but in different proportions. His moral foundations theory lists 5 innate moral foundations:

Care/harm
Fairness/cheating
Loyalty/betrayal
Authority/subversion
Sanctity/degradation

Enactivist approaches tend to deny the split between rational problem-solving and emotion-based ethical values that Prinz and Haidt support.

Matthew Ratcliffe writes:

“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.”

Evan Thompson says:

“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)

The point is that sense-making only makes ‘sense’ in relation to an overarching valuative-affective ethical scheme, which is inextricably rational and affective. This is as true of scientific metatheory as it is of specifically labeled ethical stances. One could say its rationality is made intelligible in the way it matters , is significant , is relevant to the pragmatic purposes of the individual. If a particular scientific experiment is deemed unethical, the system of ethical values that is being applied to make this determination is already inextricably intertwined with the metatheorerical assumptions grounding the scientific theory within whose bounds the unethical experiment is generated.

Power doesn’t stand outside of knowledge as a self-contained distorting influence on it. Rather, differential forces comprise the very structure of knowledge.