> their core belief in progress is a superstition, further from the truth about the human animal than any of the world’s religions.
If some someone thinks that the history of humanity has always been one of progress, that's an empirical claim that can be shown to be false. But most of the people who I think promote the idea of progress are actually not like that. The idea of progress is an ideal, not an empirical claim. An ideal is something you aspire to, despite the fact that it does not match reality at this time, nor at any time in the past, and perhaps never even in the future.
Progress is something that you want to spend a lot of time producing, not something you just find in nature. It's something that you want to produce despite the fact that billions of people before you have failed miserably, not because of previous successes. If you want to help the kids in Africa who die of easily preventable diseases, you're a believer in progress. Just because you don't think it has a high chance of success doesn't mean that you don't want it to happen.
Now, people do disagree about what constitutes progress. But only a sophomore philosopher throws away an idea just because people disagree about it. If you throw the baby out with the bathwater every time you find a contamination in the bathwater, there will be hardly any babies left. And guess what, a life without ideals is like a world without babies. Without babies, our species will die out. Without ideals, our intellects will have nothing better to do than contemplate the grim reality. If that's all we're going to use our brains for, why have an advanced brain in the first place?
> We simply need to accept our fate, as they did in the classical age, before the Socratic faith in knowledge and the Christian concept of redemption combined to form the modern idea of progress and the belief in the infinite malleability of human nature.
It is not true that people simply accepted their fates prior to the invention of Greek philosophy and Christianity. Animals with highly developed brains never simply accept their fates. After all, they understand that if they manipulate nature in certain ways, at least some parts of their fate can be averted! Fruit on a branch that's too high? Get a stick to reach it. Too much weed and not enough grain? Burn the weed and plant some barley. River too deep to wade across? Build a bridge or a boat. Boat is too slow? Add some sails. No wind? Add an internal combustion engine. Anything else too inconvenient for your lazy ass? Find a way to make it easier. It's in our nature.
The paleo-conservative movement, which The National Interest seems to be a part of, is getting ridiculously out of hand. No ideal of progress? That's not even paleolithic. Cavemen lived in caves because they found it warmer and safer than sleeping in an open field or on a tree. They used stone tools because they found them more convenient than ripping things apart with bare hands.
The article, as I read it, said Gray was arguing against the ideal of progress in the human individual. The hope that the individual will use reason and knowledge to improve themselves, the world around them, and act moral / just / rationally. The endgame being no need for power structures but instead responsible and free individuals.
But, he's only addressing the individual. Humanity, the aggregate, does build organisations and power structures. We will forever trade our away our freedoms because the free individual will never be Good.
I was responding to the review by Robert W. Merry, not to Gray, at least not directly.
My impression was that Gray has an axe to grind about the idea of progress as applied to both individuals and societies. The first few paragraphs of the review talks extensively about ideas of political progress, such as Fukuyama's "End of History". The review also gives us a glimpse of Gray's colorful political opinions, followed by an extensive discussion of what Gray thinks about the political history of Europe.
Maybe that's how the reviewer chose to read between the lines, rather than what Gray himself said. The review is written in such a way that it's difficult to distinguish the content of the book from the reviewer's embellishments. In any case, as I said, I wasn't trying to respond to Gray, only to the review. The reviewer sounds like he's dying to apply Gray's theory to politics, society, and everyone else. Too much enthusiasm and too little analysis.
By the way, I suspect that I might in fact have misinterpreted what Gray and the reviewer mean by "progress". The author's (and perhaps also Gray's) usage of the word seems to be very closely related to freedom, democracy, and a few similar words to which they attach extremely negative connotations. This is certainly unusual. But at the same time, both Robert and Gray also use the word "progress" to refer to what most everybody else means by it, and what I assumed as well: scientific progress. Proof: "Outside of science, progress is simply a myth." But if I am at fault for misinterpreting their unusual use of that keyword, they are certainly at greater fault for overloading that keyword with so much hidden agenda.
>We will forever trade our away our freedoms because the free individual will never be Good.
Freedom, and the pursuit of individual desires is a form of Good. The problem is this can come at the expense of others. The question is under what conditions do free individuals strive for an inclusive "Good" if any conditions at all.
>The endgame being no need for power structures but instead responsible and free individuals.
The endgame is the ideal of a self-actualized human being. In the same way a "free man" will see his own self-interest in the interests of his family and close ones so will a self-actualized person see their own self-interest in the interests of their communities and the world.
Animals with highly developed brains never simply accept
their fates. After all, they understand that if they
manipulate nature in certain ways, at least some parts
of their fate can be averted!
Your argument has the appearance of something that's badly contrived (or derived).
You may have not chanced on arguments surrounding your premise on "highly developed brains" and natural limits imposed on such brains owing to a multitude of things including encephalization quotient (if not exclusively that).
It's verging on the conceited to make such claims without at the very least mooting the points and counterpoints surrounding such assumptions.
The following is a decent one:
Argument for a finite upper limit to human knowledge
1. The human brain consists of a finite number of particles
and energy states.
2. This matrix of particles and energy states is less than
what exists in the cosmos.
Ergo: The human brain has insufficient capacity to contain
a matrix containing the total map of all the particles and
energy states that exist in the cosmos.
Ergo: A human's knowledge is limited.
Further: All of the humans that exist, or will ever exist,
will always comprise a subset of the cosmos; Ergo, the
collective knowledge of humanity is also limited.
Argument dismantling the aforementioned
That isn't convincing. All you have shown is there is not
a one to one ratio of particles in a human brain and the
sum of the universe. This isn't an indication of epistemic
limitation. Although, I agree we have epistemic limitations.
If a natural upper limit does exist - that also stunts our ability to rise above certain petty disputes arising out of a set of very human instincts such as ego, vanity and
self-preservation - then progress could indeed be an illusory concept.
The physics argument against your "Argument for a finite upper limit to human knowledge" is that outside one brains lightcone, nothing can be known or matter. Inside that brain's lightcone, the ratio of states between particles in the brain vs particles in the lightcone is "pretty good" such that it could, possibly, never become the limiting factor. Not "all the particles in the cosmos" but more like all the particles in the light cone plus whatever light arrives from further away outside. Its really pretty small now.
Also you can't use a scientific argument to discuss non-scientific things. "stuff outside the lightcone" is defined as non-scientific by its very nature. We'll never observe it by definition, we'll never be able to test a hypothesis by definition... Way outside the scientific method. You'll need a non-scientific argument. May as well use religion.
Now you might get somewhere with an argument a little more advanced based on some kind of communications theory theoretical maximum signal to noise ratio over a lifetime implying a maximum theoretical bandwidth of information. Perhaps some kind of (related?) thermodynamic argument.
I completely agree with you that human knowledge, whether individual or collective, is severely limited compared to all there is to know in the Universe. Part of this has to do with the fact that we as a species has only been observing the Universe scientifically for ~500 years. But it probably also has to do with the physiological limitations of homo sapiens. I don't disagree with any of that.
But what does that have to do with the sentences you quoted from me? Is it even relevant? Human knowledge is limited, so what?
1. Human knowledge is limited.
2. ???
3. Ergo, progress is an illusory concept.
You haven't supplied a single proposition that could fill the space of #2.
Meanwhile, the fact that our mental capacities are limited has not prevented us from "rising above certain petty disputes arising out of ... ego, vanity, and self-preservation" at least from time to time, even if it's only .0001% of the time. The idea that progress always happens is a ridiculous proposition, but the idea that progress is always stunted by other factors is just as laughable. Also, even if we did agree that progress never happens in reality, there is still a very large logical gap between that and the (even more preposterous) proposition that the concept of progress itself is an illusion.
If you say "True progress rarely if ever happens", fine, we can talk about that.
If you say "Your definition of progress is wrong", fine, we can talk about that.
If you say "Progress is not one thing but many different things depending on the context", fine, we can talk about that. Cultural relativism is nothing new, there's plenty of good philosophy on that topic, and you're at least a century late to the game if you think waving the flag of cultural relativism will change anything.
But if you say "The concept of progress is an illusion" (or some variation of it), that's just one of those strings of profound-looking words that college freshmen put down in their PHIL 101 essays. If there is any useful content in such catchphrases, I have yet to see any. So I suppose it's just a figure of speech.
> Your argument has the appearance of something that's badly contrived (or derived).
Arguments don't have the "appearance" of being badly contrived, and even if they do in some sense, it doesn't matter. Either they are badly contrived, or they are not. If they are indeed badly contrived, it should be possible to say why without committing the fallacy of ignoratio elenchi.
"The arc of human progress - as defined by the narrow parameters of decreasing
number of recorded human conflicts and genocides, declining number of
incurable devastating medical conditions, improving/degenerating overall
environmental health of the planet etc - is an illusory one."
or
as you put it
"true human progress is illusory" (whatever the parameters that determine it)
However what cannot be denied is that "liberal humanism", as Gray puts it, has come to wield the "pervasive power" it has now, in large part due to the advancements made by the West in the fields of science, technology and medicine and not despite of those advancements.
It's hard to make a case for universal "liberal humanism" when your own people are succumbing to famines in the millions.
Eg: The Great Famine in Ireland (1845–1852).
So simply put
1. Knowledge is an absolute necessary element for the overcoming of
"cultural backwardness, blindness and folly" and to advance
"to ever more elevated stages of enlightenment and
civilization" and thereby the progress of humans.
2. Human knowledge is said to be limited.
3. Ergo, human progress will always be stunted by the said natural
limit of knowledge.
4. Further: There is no necessary condition that prevents humans from
reverting to the ways of the past once that limit has been reached.
> It's hard to make a case for universal "liberal humanism" when your own people are succumbing to famines in the millions.
I already said that I'm no fan of "universal liberal humanism". If someone thinks the Irish famine was progress because everything progresses all the time, they're wrong. But just because liberal humanism has problems doesn't mean that one must run to the other extreme. "If you hate my enemy, join my side" might be a useful tactic in war, but in philosophy people will just shrug and say "No way, you're both my enemies." My opinion is that humanity sometimes progress, sometimes stagnates, and sometimes regresses.
Anyway, here's my objection:
1. Agreed.
2. Agreed.
3. Nope. Human progress will be limited by the aforementioned
limit of human knowledge, but this is a very large limit,
so there's plenty of room for progress before we hit the limit.
We might have already hit the limit in some areas, but that
doesn't mean we won't keep making progress in other areas.
4. Agreed, but there is no necessary condition that says that
humans MUST revert to an inferior state, either.
Maybe they'll just stagnate until evolution produces
a superior species with higher limits of knowledge. Why not?
Just because X isn't necessary doesn't mean that
not-X is necessary. Usually, they're both unnecessary.
Yes, limit for human brain should exist, however anyone with the ideal of progress knows that there are a couple of ways to change that - genetic modification and artificial intelligence are few of the possibilities. So the limits exists only for us, not necessarily for our children. Just like our ancestors at some time in the evolution path had limits that made them incapable of even having language, children of the future might exceed all our limits by a scale we don't even imagine now.
If some someone thinks that the history of humanity has always been one of progress, that's an empirical claim that can be shown to be false. But most of the people who I think promote the idea of progress are actually not like that. The idea of progress is an ideal, not an empirical claim. An ideal is something you aspire to, despite the fact that it does not match reality at this time, nor at any time in the past, and perhaps never even in the future.
Progress is something that you want to spend a lot of time producing, not something you just find in nature. It's something that you want to produce despite the fact that billions of people before you have failed miserably, not because of previous successes. If you want to help the kids in Africa who die of easily preventable diseases, you're a believer in progress. Just because you don't think it has a high chance of success doesn't mean that you don't want it to happen.
Now, people do disagree about what constitutes progress. But only a sophomore philosopher throws away an idea just because people disagree about it. If you throw the baby out with the bathwater every time you find a contamination in the bathwater, there will be hardly any babies left. And guess what, a life without ideals is like a world without babies. Without babies, our species will die out. Without ideals, our intellects will have nothing better to do than contemplate the grim reality. If that's all we're going to use our brains for, why have an advanced brain in the first place?
> We simply need to accept our fate, as they did in the classical age, before the Socratic faith in knowledge and the Christian concept of redemption combined to form the modern idea of progress and the belief in the infinite malleability of human nature.
It is not true that people simply accepted their fates prior to the invention of Greek philosophy and Christianity. Animals with highly developed brains never simply accept their fates. After all, they understand that if they manipulate nature in certain ways, at least some parts of their fate can be averted! Fruit on a branch that's too high? Get a stick to reach it. Too much weed and not enough grain? Burn the weed and plant some barley. River too deep to wade across? Build a bridge or a boat. Boat is too slow? Add some sails. No wind? Add an internal combustion engine. Anything else too inconvenient for your lazy ass? Find a way to make it easier. It's in our nature.
The paleo-conservative movement, which The National Interest seems to be a part of, is getting ridiculously out of hand. No ideal of progress? That's not even paleolithic. Cavemen lived in caves because they found it warmer and safer than sleeping in an open field or on a tree. They used stone tools because they found them more convenient than ripping things apart with bare hands.