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RE: Is history progress? - 5/5/2011 10:45:12 AM   
NorthernGent


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quote:

ORIGINAL: juliaoceania

Capitalistic hegemony forces some people to die for lack of medical care while others piss away wealth.



Out of interest then, Julia, why do hold political beliefs? If there is no such thing as progress, then why bother?

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RE: Is history progress? - 5/5/2011 6:37:37 PM   
juliaoceania


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Just because I do not take it as a given that progress is certain, nor do I see history as a record of it, does not mean I do not hope for progress

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RE: Is history progress? - 5/6/2011 11:55:05 AM   
NorthernGent


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quote:

ORIGINAL: juliaoceania

Just because I do not take it as a given that progress is certain, nor do I see history as a record of it, does not mean I do not hope for progress



Your aim is progress, then; a better as opposed to a different.

Where has your idea of better come from? What are you comparing better to? Does experience play a part, or have you simply conjured up your liberal ideals?

For example: women's rights. Have we not gone through a progressive trend from John Stuart Mill's views to the suffragettes to de Beauvoir to the feminist movements to being enacted in law? Is the current situation regarding women merely different, or has real progress been made?

And, consider this for a moment, Julia: what is the purpose of knowledge? to enrich and improve life? is knowledge not cumulative? have we learned from previous generations? do we know more today that previous generations?

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RE: Is history progress? - 5/6/2011 7:00:00 PM   
Real0ne


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Status: offline 		you have a channel in your mind and approach change as better.  people of ancient knew unsurmountably more than we know now.

If there is a better, its only in that more people can have the things only the very wealthy enjoyed in as much as knowledge etc.

real knowledge is nearly extinct even though we can say look at our science of today.  much has been lost forever due to commercial tyranny and powerful interests destroying books behind them. 

what is better and who determines it? you? the king? who?


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RE: Is history progress? - 5/6/2011 8:03:08 PM   
eihwaz


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quote:

ORIGINAL: juliaoceania
quote:

ORIGINAL: eihwaz
Evolution optimizes for a particular environment or, more precisely, a set of selection pressures; it is not merely change.  Optimization via natural selection need not imply teleology.  As the environment changes, so do the criteria for fitness.

[...] some adaptations might be good for one set of conditions, but not for another, and the size of the beak changes rather quickly to suit the environment... I suppose you could see this as "optimization", I would not call it "progress". One beak is not inherently superior to another. [...]

I think we mostly agree; we're just using slightly different terminology.  In physical evolution, superiority is measured solely by fitness for survival and reproduction within  a particular environment.  Other than fitness, the phenomena wrought by evolution have no intrinsic --  e.g. moral or aesthetic -- value.  I'm using the term optimization to refer to the tendency of evolution to improve fitness.

quote:

ORIGINAL: juliaoceania
progress insinuates that something is better than another thing


Progress, on the other hand, is change measured according to specific extrinsic values and goals:  Elucidating the neural basis of consciousness is good; equality of women in society is good;  transparency in government is good;  preventing and curing disease is good;  eradication of hunger is good;  preventing extremes of wealth and poverty is good.  Relativity is superior to Newtonian Mechanics because understanding the nature of the universe is good.  And so on.

Attaining these "good" changes reflects human cultural evolution (which as you know is more Larmarckian, not Darwinian).  In my earlier post, I was trying to explore the notion that "progress" is a type of value-laden optimization produced by human cultural evolution.  But maybe that doesn't work after all.

Interestingly, for there to be progress, it seems a society has to believe in it and define it.  And not all human societies do or have.  In order to recognize progress, you have to define it, and that requires an underlying set of notions of what is good.

quote:

ORIGINAL: juliaoceania
In fact, I am not one of these people who sees any life as inherently better than or more progressive than another.

Not even cats?




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