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You can do clustering, but it might not be useful. Read Gray's article. If you take the "average position," you're likely to get to positions that Pinker and so

You can do clustering, but it might not be useful. Read Gray's article. If you take the "average position," you're likely to get to positions that Pinker and so on wouldn't find acceptable. My point isn't that there's no possible way to define "Enlightenment values." Quite the opposite. There are many ways to define those values, and if you choose one you must 1) justify that choice, and 2) be aware that you've made a choice, rather than passing your idiosyncratic definition as the only possible definition.

taeric 9y ago
Pinker's argument is compatible with the average being a position that is not acceptable. The assertion is that the average is progressing in what we view as progress to more acceptable positions. Pretty sure he even has quite a few sections discussing exactly this. I confess this is mainly compatible with my world view, so I am likely giving it more leeway than I realize. I fully expect that 200 years from now, someone will easily be able to discern ridiculously backwards views that I maintain with a clear mind today. I don't think you'll have to wait that long, honestly. My children will be far more progressive than I am. That is progress.
mcguire 9y ago
To wit: "Many Enlightenment thinkers have been avowedly or implicitly hostile to liberalism. One of the most influential, the 19th-century French positivist Auguste Comte – not discussed by Pinker – promoted a brand of scientism that was overtly anti-liberal. Human progress meant following the path of reason and moving from magical thinking to scientific inquiry. In a society based on science there will be no need for liberal values, since moral and political questions will be answered by experts. "Comte admired the Middle Ages as a time when society was healthily “organic” and unified by a single orthodoxy; but the organic society of the future would be ruled by science, not monotheism. The superstitious faith of earlier times would be supplanted by what he called “the Religion of Humanity” – a rationalist creed in which an imaginary version of the human species would occupy the place of the Supreme Being. Comte’s core ideas – reason, science, progress and humanism – are precisely those that Pinker lists at the start of this book as the central values of the Enlightenment. Interestingly, neither of them mentions freedom or toleration. "The link between the Enlightenment and liberal values, which Pinker and many others today assert as a universal truth, is actually rather tenuous. It is strongest in Enlightenment thinkers who were wedded to monotheism, such as Locke and indeed Kant. The more hostile the Enlightenment has been to monotheism, the more illiberal it has been. Comte’s anti-liberalism inspired Charles Maurras, a French collaborator with Nazism and the leading theorist of Action Française – a fascistic movement formed during the Dreyfus affair – in his defence of integral nationalism. Lenin continued the Jacobins’ campaign against religion as well as their pedagogy of terror." There's obviously no need for freedom if science and reason can tell you the right answer, no?

taeric 9y ago

Pinker's argument is compatible with the average being a position that is not acceptable. The assertion is that the average is progressing in what we view as progress to more acceptable positions. Pretty sure he even has quite a few sections discussing exactly this. I confess this is mainly compatible with my world view, so I am likely giving it more leeway than I realize. I fully expect that 200 years from now, someone will easily be able to discern ridiculously backwards views that I maintain with a clear mind today. I don't think you'll have to wait that long, honestly. My children will be far more progressive than I am. That is progress.

mcguire 9y ago

To wit: "Many Enlightenment thinkers have been avowedly or implicitly hostile to liberalism. One of the most influential, the 19th-century French positivist Auguste Comte – not discussed by Pinker – promoted a brand of scientism that was overtly anti-liberal. Human progress meant following the path of reason and moving from magical thinking to scientific inquiry. In a society based on science there will be no need for liberal values, since moral and political questions will be answered by experts. "Comte admired the Middle Ages as a time when society was healthily “organic” and unified by a single orthodoxy; but the organic society of the future would be ruled by science, not monotheism. The superstitious faith of earlier times would be supplanted by what he called “the Religion of Humanity” – a rationalist creed in which an imaginary version of the human species would occupy the place of the Supreme Being. Comte’s core ideas – reason, science, progress and humanism – are precisely those that Pinker lists at the start of this book as the central values of the Enlightenment. Interestingly, neither of them mentions freedom or toleration. "The link between the Enlightenment and liberal values, which Pinker and many others today assert as a universal truth, is actually rather tenuous. It is strongest in Enlightenment thinkers who were wedded to monotheism, such as Locke and indeed Kant. The more hostile the Enlightenment has been to monotheism, the more illiberal it has been. Comte’s anti-liberalism inspired Charles Maurras, a French collaborator with Nazism and the leading theorist of Action Française – a fascistic movement formed during the Dreyfus affair – in his defence of integral nationalism. Lenin continued the Jacobins’ campaign against religion as well as their pedagogy of terror." There's obviously no need for freedom if science and reason can tell you the right answer, no?