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Without defining what "Progress" and "Good" are, the whole concept that there is some sort of "Progress" is meaningless. If you can define those terms, you can

Without defining what "Progress" and "Good" are, the whole concept that there is some sort of "Progress" is meaningless. If you can define those terms, you can maybe start to study such a topic - but the definition of such terms belongs to philosophy, not science. Technological advancement could certainly studied, but what we do or don't do with it can only be "Good" or "Progressing" to some idealistic goal if we have identified those.

dredmorbius 7y ago
By “progress,” we mean the combination of economic, technological, scientific, cultural, and organizational advancement that has transformed our lives and raised standards of living over the past couple of centuries. Given in TFA's third paragraph.
- hacknat 7y ago
  Well I can definitely tear down this definition. “Advancement” doesn’t mean anything. What does it mean to advance culturally or organizationally without already having morality defined? Also raising standards of living? Is that all we’re after? Slaves in slave societies had rising standards of living, did that make slavery okay? The scary thing about an article like this is the sheer ignorance and hubris behind it. No credible philosopher will tell you that we can objectify morality, it is a provable logical fallacy. That doesn’t seem to stop people form thinking they can do it. The folks in history who thought they could do it are some of the most reprehensible people in all of human history.
  - ziddoap 7y ago
    >Slaves in slave societies had rising standards of living, did that make slavery okay? I doubt anyone is making the argument slavery is okay. At least try to argue in good faith. This is a ridiculous example.
    - anongraddebt 7y ago
      One unclear example doesn't negate his/her argument. Even one bad example doesn't do this. And neither does arguing in bad faith (if for some reason they are doing so). The argument still stands. You can't coherently make demands about 'progress' (whatever that could even mean) without having some rational and already worked out framework for what determines 'progress' in the first place. And the commenter is right that failing this, such talk can be dangerous because by a sleight of hand you can substitute - without argument - what is supposedly rational with whatever you simply desire at that moment in time.
      - ziddoap 7y ago
        The example was very clear, and although it might not negate it, it certainly undermines it. If contrived examples don't have bearing on the validity of an argument, I don't know how we are supposed to move forward in a debate. I agree with the spirit of the parent poster, but to claim the OP is arguing slavery is okay because of raising standards of living is just as dangerous to this discussion.
        anongraddebt 7y ago
        If an argument is not novel (it's been presented before to many people and there is decent awareness of it), is well-understood, and is valid, then someone can use poor examples to explicate the argument and those examples do nothing to undermine the argument. This commenter's argument was just such an argument.
        ziddoap 7y ago
        If the position was one you didn't agree with, would you still be defending such a hyperbolic example? Do we agree that how you present an argument is important in how the argument is received by others? I don't follow why an argument with "decent awareness" (whatever that could even mean) or one that is non-novel has different standards to a novel argument or one that has less awareness.
  - infinite_luck 7y ago
    I'm curious about the logical fallacy that you can objectify morality. I would like to do more reading on this subject, could you direct me towards the proof for this? I'm genuinely interested.
    - carapace 7y ago
      In the limit, Gödel. (I'm not joking, I swear! To objectify morality you have to encode it, eh? So you're sunk before you begin: there will be moral things that can't be encoded, and encode-able things that are not moral, or cannot be proven moral nor immoral. And then you have the problem of deciding whether "objectifing morality" is itself a moral goal, n'est-ce pas? )
  - carapace 7y ago
    I agree. E.g. the Communists insist they are benefiting the Tibetans. Or consider the native Hawaiians vs. the telescope on their sacred volcano Mauna Kea. Without establishing the greater context "progress" is a shiboleth. Wendell Berry has an essay, "What are People For?", that's worth reading in this connexion. The simplest way to encounter the issue is be asking yourself, as a two-year old would, "And then what..? And then what..? And then what..?"
- rohan_shah 7y ago
  Increasing the standard of living for people in your country by lowering the standard of living for people living in Africa doesn't much sound like "progress for everyone",does it? Don't tell me that increased population doesn't decrease standard of living.
  - dredmorbius 7y ago
    A very valid point. See Gregory Clark's A Farewell to Alms intro: Prosperity, however, has not come to all societies. Material consumption in some countries, mainly in sub-Saharan Africa, is now well below the pre-industrial norm. Countries such as Malawi or Tanzania would be better off in material terms had they never had contact with the industrialized world and instead continued in their preindustrial state. Modern medicine, airplanes, gasoline, computers—the whole technological cornucopia of the past two hundred years—have succeeded there in producing among the lowest material living standards ever experienced. These African societies have remained trapped in the Malthusian era, where technological advances merely produce more people and living standards are driven down to subsistence. But modern medicine has reduced the material minimum required for subsistence to a level far below that of the Stone Age. Just as the Industrial Revolution reduced income inequalities within societies, it has increased them between societies, in a process recently labeled the Great Divergence.1 The gap in incomes between countries is of the order of 50:1. There walk the earth now both the richest people who ever lived and the poorest. http://assets.press.princeton.edu/chapters/s8461.pdf http://assets.press.princeton.edu/chapters/s8461.pdf More: http://faculty.econ.ucdavis.edu/faculty/gclark/a_farewell_to_alms.html http://faculty.econ.ucdavis.edu/faculty/gclark/a_farewell_to...
    - rohan_shah 7y ago
      That's great. I was making a similar hypothesis. Didn't know about the data though. Here's my argument: I agree that capitalism is such a system that allows for expansion of wealth by means of mass production. But as America gets rich, there were suppressed workers in China who were doing the "hard work" for Americans. As China gets rich, the Africans are doing it for them. So calling the American capitalism as a foolproof system that elevates "everyone" out of poverty is just plain wrong because it helps produce more poor people in other poor countries. And then the market says, more the poor people supply, less the wages. So they're always creating population booms somewhere to sell their products as well as get cheap labour. But the Americans have given a positive association to population boom by telling a story called population booms = economic prosperity. So there is going to be a population boom in Africa soon. With more than 2 bn people. "Get ready for more cheap labour!" Says the US free markets. But once everyone is used up and educated, what then?
pcmaffey 7y ago
Isn’t progress quite simply, evolution? We study it so we can apply it intentionally. The philosophical part to me is Who is this progress meant to serve? Everyone alive today? The human species as a whole? Our environment? Some greater consciousness?
- Nasrudith 7y ago
  It depends on how progress is defined. Technically it implies movement towards some end-state wheather it is obtainable or not. Disease outbreaks are a progression technically but in this context it is limited to positive changes. Evolution itself doesn't neccessarily fit - while it may progress it may also stagnate or get caught in cycles. While a result may eventually dominate it is important to remember evolution has no goals - it is literal survivorship bias manifest. As for intent I believe the answer is an unsatisfying "it depends" as who it serves and who defines meaning changes and the question becomes originally or currently? Musket arming of minimally trained recruits may have been meant to serve aristocracy to allow fielding large armies cheaper but if it ends in them being deposed clearly it didn't serve them in the end and the purpose must change or else be abandoned.
- dredmorbius 7y ago
  That's an argument to be made, but there are still questions of mechanisms, dynamics, limits, etc. Darwin proposed evolution. Mendel hypothsized genes. Crick and Watson discovered DNA's structure. Details matter.

dredmorbius 7y ago

By “progress,” we mean the combination of economic, technological, scientific, cultural, and organizational advancement that has transformed our lives and raised standards of living over the past couple of centuries. Given in TFA's third paragraph.

hacknat 7y ago
Well I can definitely tear down this definition. “Advancement” doesn’t mean anything. What does it mean to advance culturally or organizationally without already having morality defined? Also raising standards of living? Is that all we’re after? Slaves in slave societies had rising standards of living, did that make slavery okay? The scary thing about an article like this is the sheer ignorance and hubris behind it. No credible philosopher will tell you that we can objectify morality, it is a provable logical fallacy. That doesn’t seem to stop people form thinking they can do it. The folks in history who thought they could do it are some of the most reprehensible people in all of human history.
- ziddoap 7y ago
  >Slaves in slave societies had rising standards of living, did that make slavery okay? I doubt anyone is making the argument slavery is okay. At least try to argue in good faith. This is a ridiculous example.
  - anongraddebt 7y ago
    One unclear example doesn't negate his/her argument. Even one bad example doesn't do this. And neither does arguing in bad faith (if for some reason they are doing so). The argument still stands. You can't coherently make demands about 'progress' (whatever that could even mean) without having some rational and already worked out framework for what determines 'progress' in the first place. And the commenter is right that failing this, such talk can be dangerous because by a sleight of hand you can substitute - without argument - what is supposedly rational with whatever you simply desire at that moment in time.
    - ziddoap 7y ago
      The example was very clear, and although it might not negate it, it certainly undermines it. If contrived examples don't have bearing on the validity of an argument, I don't know how we are supposed to move forward in a debate. I agree with the spirit of the parent poster, but to claim the OP is arguing slavery is okay because of raising standards of living is just as dangerous to this discussion.
      - anongraddebt 7y ago
        If an argument is not novel (it's been presented before to many people and there is decent awareness of it), is well-understood, and is valid, then someone can use poor examples to explicate the argument and those examples do nothing to undermine the argument. This commenter's argument was just such an argument.
        ziddoap 7y ago
        If the position was one you didn't agree with, would you still be defending such a hyperbolic example? Do we agree that how you present an argument is important in how the argument is received by others? I don't follow why an argument with "decent awareness" (whatever that could even mean) or one that is non-novel has different standards to a novel argument or one that has less awareness.
- infinite_luck 7y ago
  I'm curious about the logical fallacy that you can objectify morality. I would like to do more reading on this subject, could you direct me towards the proof for this? I'm genuinely interested.
  - carapace 7y ago
    In the limit, Gödel. (I'm not joking, I swear! To objectify morality you have to encode it, eh? So you're sunk before you begin: there will be moral things that can't be encoded, and encode-able things that are not moral, or cannot be proven moral nor immoral. And then you have the problem of deciding whether "objectifing morality" is itself a moral goal, n'est-ce pas? )
- carapace 7y ago
  I agree. E.g. the Communists insist they are benefiting the Tibetans. Or consider the native Hawaiians vs. the telescope on their sacred volcano Mauna Kea. Without establishing the greater context "progress" is a shiboleth. Wendell Berry has an essay, "What are People For?", that's worth reading in this connexion. The simplest way to encounter the issue is be asking yourself, as a two-year old would, "And then what..? And then what..? And then what..?"
rohan_shah 7y ago
Increasing the standard of living for people in your country by lowering the standard of living for people living in Africa doesn't much sound like "progress for everyone",does it? Don't tell me that increased population doesn't decrease standard of living.
- dredmorbius 7y ago
  A very valid point. See Gregory Clark's A Farewell to Alms intro: Prosperity, however, has not come to all societies. Material consumption in some countries, mainly in sub-Saharan Africa, is now well below the pre-industrial norm. Countries such as Malawi or Tanzania would be better off in material terms had they never had contact with the industrialized world and instead continued in their preindustrial state. Modern medicine, airplanes, gasoline, computers—the whole technological cornucopia of the past two hundred years—have succeeded there in producing among the lowest material living standards ever experienced. These African societies have remained trapped in the Malthusian era, where technological advances merely produce more people and living standards are driven down to subsistence. But modern medicine has reduced the material minimum required for subsistence to a level far below that of the Stone Age. Just as the Industrial Revolution reduced income inequalities within societies, it has increased them between societies, in a process recently labeled the Great Divergence.1 The gap in incomes between countries is of the order of 50:1. There walk the earth now both the richest people who ever lived and the poorest. http://assets.press.princeton.edu/chapters/s8461.pdf http://assets.press.princeton.edu/chapters/s8461.pdf More: http://faculty.econ.ucdavis.edu/faculty/gclark/a_farewell_to_alms.html http://faculty.econ.ucdavis.edu/faculty/gclark/a_farewell_to...
  - rohan_shah 7y ago
    That's great. I was making a similar hypothesis. Didn't know about the data though. Here's my argument: I agree that capitalism is such a system that allows for expansion of wealth by means of mass production. But as America gets rich, there were suppressed workers in China who were doing the "hard work" for Americans. As China gets rich, the Africans are doing it for them. So calling the American capitalism as a foolproof system that elevates "everyone" out of poverty is just plain wrong because it helps produce more poor people in other poor countries. And then the market says, more the poor people supply, less the wages. So they're always creating population booms somewhere to sell their products as well as get cheap labour. But the Americans have given a positive association to population boom by telling a story called population booms = economic prosperity. So there is going to be a population boom in Africa soon. With more than 2 bn people. "Get ready for more cheap labour!" Says the US free markets. But once everyone is used up and educated, what then?

pcmaffey 7y ago

Isn’t progress quite simply, evolution? We study it so we can apply it intentionally. The philosophical part to me is Who is this progress meant to serve? Everyone alive today? The human species as a whole? Our environment? Some greater consciousness?

Nasrudith 7y ago
It depends on how progress is defined. Technically it implies movement towards some end-state wheather it is obtainable or not. Disease outbreaks are a progression technically but in this context it is limited to positive changes. Evolution itself doesn't neccessarily fit - while it may progress it may also stagnate or get caught in cycles. While a result may eventually dominate it is important to remember evolution has no goals - it is literal survivorship bias manifest. As for intent I believe the answer is an unsatisfying "it depends" as who it serves and who defines meaning changes and the question becomes originally or currently? Musket arming of minimally trained recruits may have been meant to serve aristocracy to allow fielding large armies cheaper but if it ends in them being deposed clearly it didn't serve them in the end and the purpose must change or else be abandoned.
dredmorbius 7y ago
That's an argument to be made, but there are still questions of mechanisms, dynamics, limits, etc. Darwin proposed evolution. Mendel hypothsized genes. Crick and Watson discovered DNA's structure. Details matter.