Has progress been made? How to measure it?
When is a philosopher justified in their assumptions about (human) nature? We have science for the nature part that is going along full steam ahead. See, this little pig has its own issues when anyone from the fild of philosophy says something profound, deep, almost orgasmic about human nature. Yet, here we are some 2000 years after we crucified our own version of Jesus or that one person who poitinted this fact out.
How far have we come since him?
If progress has been made in some regards, then how do we measure it?
Talking the Wittgensteinian turn, are all the answers to philosophy, really psychological and therefore immeasurable and therefore quietism?
How far have we come since him?
If progress has been made in some regards, then how do we measure it?
Talking the Wittgensteinian turn, are all the answers to philosophy, really psychological and therefore immeasurable and therefore quietism?
Comments (51)
But, that's not the same as saying that there's no point in doing philosophy. There's a difference here that I'm trying to point out between pragmatism and something like existentialism. The two don't get along well, as the existentialist tells the pragmatists something and the other replies to go see someone who has authority on the matter.
OK, now I'm just plain bullshitting. Yet, we do that a lot in philosophy. It goes on round the clock and sometimes turns into some pop-psychology trivia or profundity.
To nail, the dam point is for me to ask, when does a philosopher have authority over... well, pretty much anything philosophical?
Haven't we been tunneling and digging and heaving at these problems that others disregard, outright call bullshit, or in the worst cases end up as psychological fluff?
I think the issue as I see it. Anyone else sees it from some different perspective? I for one see it as a paradox. Once someone calls themselves a "philosopher", they've violated the no-appeal to authoritarian rule, that ought to govern any liberal art science.
Ehh, if anyone has been following my ramblings if not on a benzodiazepine high, then if you are sincere and honest with yourself (can I get a show of hands on who are actually like that?) then what are you trying to accomplish here?
I know my purpose. It's just to wallow around here as this is a safe and special place on the internet, unlike no other which needs to be highlighted and exclaimed from every mountaintop. Nobody really likes me doing it; but, I do it regardless. Much of what I write is shit, and will never change your life in the positive or negative.
I would call it a vicious stigma to be honest.
Quoting Grre
Now, that's where dangerous psychologizing of the subject can occur. Just in my opinion.
Quoting Grre
Keep up the awesome job, despite what you or others might think.
He sure stirred the pot a lot.
When they’re dead. When they’re dead it is then for the rest of us to sort out what is of use to us or not without them making additional footnotes in order to scrape together the vague resemblance of “meaning” to what has been thoroughly torn to shreds by the analysis and critique of others.
To view any particular philosopher as possessing absolute understanding of anything is to not understand the point of the philosophers endless quest. Whatever a human does it is never unsurpassed.
Maybe we assume the birth of philosophical investigations - in the ancient world of Greece - in completely the wrong manner. “Philosophy” may well have died at the hands of Plato and Aristotle rather than being assumed to have been born via them. Much like the mythical death of Christos brought into the world the hellish work of religious institutional power in its wake; basically the conception of the god figure as mask the devil produced to entice the vices of humans!
Philosophy is against knowledge and its pursuit whilst the church is the household of the antichrist. Both viciously feed on the part-rotten, and luckily still twitching, cadaver of their slain opponents. As the mostly passive observers of this vivisection we can only hope for something as violent as Frankenstein’s Monster to arise reanimated and full of recrimination in order to usher us out of the lifeless shadows cast by the killers “prescientific man” and “creative freedom”.
Pragmatism is its own counterfactual stupidity. A hoodwinking of humanity’s creative eye and nascent faculties directed at “direction” itself - meaning exploration in the light of ignorance (ignorance the best moral attribute of humanity that we’re able to conceptual frame).
Yeah, you get my drift. But, here wait for it... it's Whitehead with his claim that the (majority) of Western philosophy is footnotes to Plato... Now, how do you even respond to that?
Quoting I like sushi
Then I take it you're not a fan of pragmatism. But, it's one of those books you read when things are going well, not when it's angsty or catastrophic or imploding, eh?
I’m not a fan of any philosophical perspective stretched and warped over every question of being in some hideous malformation pronounced as “knowledge” merely by being wedded to absolutism.
Or in more plain language ... it depends ;)
I'm inclined to agree, but you might have to convince me.
How to measure it? You need a specific example and an operand definition of progress.
Unfortunately, philosophers don't get the same kind of credibility that other artists get when they die.
What disgusts me the most about the whole ordeal is that we study the works of various philosophers (whether their values suck or not), but if we ask ourselves which of these philosophers' ideals we actually use, the answer is none or Karl Marx (lol).
Don't get me wrong, none of them were 100% right about anything, it seems. People have their own extremes about certain things, but there are great paths that make very much sense to our Existence that we should already have adopted and should be carried out.
The way I see it is that Societies feel as if they cannot thrive off of these kinds of Spiritual ponderings. They have to keep the People fearful, focused on fueling endless and unnecessary wars, feeding greedy people who can already more than eat, etc. If we encouraged these kinds of conversations and Lifestyles, we surely would be living in a better time period as Eudaimonia would be carrying our Societies into true Success so we can continue on with the development of our species in a Peaceful manner.
It's an optimistic point of view, but a realistic one.
In line with the notion of personal progress is the idea that philosophy is about self-knowledge, a theme we find in Plato as well as more recently in Nietzsche and Wittgenstein and others. Some, however, deny that philosophy has anything to do with the self but rather with timeless or objective truth or a view from nowhere.
My own orientation is zetetic skepticism - inquiry driven by knowledge of our ignorance. Progress in this sense is not a matter of replacing ignorance with knowledge or wisdom in some absolute sense, but with phronesis or practical wisdom. It is a matter of determining how best to live in light of our ignorance of what is best. In the absence of knowledge, one is guided by what seems to be best. But what seems to be best may not be what is best, and so, one is always willing to examine and revise his or her opinions. This is a Socratic attitude, but it may also be expressed in terms from another time and place, the Daodejing - "practice extreme tenuousness"
Quoting MrSpock
Leaving out the nitpicking, this is analogous to the notion that humanity is too far ahead of its time. Consider how the more technologically advanced we become, the more problems seem to emerge. This is antithetical to what should be the case: that technology should be solving problems. At this point we should have seen major improvements in the human condition, but there is a disparity between our level of wisdom and our level of technology. We have never seen any significantly concentrated effort by humanity to figure out how to best use technology (an ethical question), only the blind marching forward of technological progress. Essentially we are toddlers with loaded guns.
Plato lays out his plan for how society or the Holii Poli ought to be governed in his Republic. Marx in his Kapital, while as per @Fooloso4, other philosophers take a more inward look.
What do others think?
What is it to practise 'extreme tenuousness' ?
Do you have a reference ?
You know... voluntary discomfort, cynic ethos, and the like?
Sincere and honest with ourselves? Such people are as rare as rocking-horse sh*t! :wink: My own best attempt at honesty says I'm here to enjoy myself, and maybe to learn something. It's even possible someone might learn something from me too, although it might only be tolerance. :wink:
I do not think of this as philosophical progress. It should not be forgotten that the social/political/theological changes brought about by Plato is due to belief in his noble lies. In the case of Marx, it was ideological, or, as some would have it, messianic. Although, thanks largely to Enlightenment thinkers we enjoy a great deal of freedom and autonomy, that condition is precarious. It is entirely possible that the future may bring an age of repression and brutality unmatched in history. Freedom and autonomy can be a curse as well as a blessing as people struggle to find their identity and way.
I do not see progress having been made in the state of the art of philosophy. There is good reason why there has been a resurgence of interest in the ancients.
Daodejing, Chapter 16. Depending on which translation you are using it may say something slightly or significantly different. Tenuousness is an openness, a lack of insistence. It is to allow things to show themselves as they are rather than imposing some conceptual scheme or structure on them. It is the opposite of attempting to have things conform to one's will.
In line with this, I would not push the comparison with Socrates too far, but if we are aware of our ignorance then we do not insist that things are or should be according to our desires and understanding.
But, what about Wittgenstein? Don't you think he made his fair share of contribution to the state of philosophy?
Technology doesn’t change our ethical stance it merely magnifies what we are, where we are and where we can potentially go. It’s not like we can simply stop scientific/technological advances, but I’d agree that politically such issues are really started to become entangled in how we think about society and what society is, will be, and cannot become in the future.
I don’t fear the unknown to the point of petrification, but I certainly wouldn’t blame others for doing so and thank them for their needed concern as a reminder of possible pitfalls.
Yes, I do think he made a contribution, but the question is about progress.
Some remarks from Wittgenstein's Culture and Value:
I think this sounds too passive for general societal or philosophical progress but perhaps in a personal particular sense it has its place. Like knowing when to stop arguing the toss about abstract concepts.
Quoting Wallows
Wallows, if we consider philosophical progress in personal terms e.g. as improvement in one's state of being or doing, then what did Wittgenstein do for you ?
How would this compare to the wisdom of the ancients in aiding self understanding and promoting a better way of living ?
How do you measure any progress - when do you realise it is happening/has happened ?
Quoting Fooloso4
Why not ?
Ah, does the key lie in not insisting as in not being dogmatic or stubborn or absolute in a single perhaps obsessive desire to get one's own way ? Because without knowledge of facts, or other perspectives, it might not be the best way...
You're asking me quite a difficult question. I'll get back to you later on this.
I know. I am not sure I could quantify my own progress according to my reading of a single philosopher.
Perhaps it might be that it is in the very fact that we have read the book ?
Even if our understanding has been less than perfect ?
Is there too much reliance on this feat of reading the challenging.
I wonder sometimes at this need to chew a book to death...
Or the other extreme - to purchase it to lie gathering dust...
Guilty as charged :smile:
But looking forward to Wittgenstein's Culture and Value.
I don't think I would necessarily want to discuss it here.But it seems to have value...
Getting back to you on your question...
So I think "value" and "progress" have been conflated with one another as of late in human history. I don't think there's any value in viewing things as only having value if progress is promoted. So, does that condemn us to some sort of dogmatism? I don't know.
This is really a very common reaction. It's more or less the same problem that Nietzsche himself opined: we have an un-fillable hole inside ourselves, an insatiable vortex into which all boons are consumed; never ending...
To bring this into context, consider that no matter how many problems we solve as individuals or as a society, there will always be problems which remain, and we're more than likely to create new problems along the way. In short, we can never possibly run out of problems.
But since the enlightenment era, people have more or less assumed that by logic and reasoning and science and technology, we can perfect ourselves and perfect society; that we may reach a kind of paradise where the menu is all meaningful, and where problems are a distant memory. This is based on really poor assumptions, namely that human desire is in fact satiable (it is to a degree,but one plateau is just next week's floor or minimum expectation).
If we look at the relative quality of life that we have the opportunity to lead, it's objectively filled with more interesting and delightful comforts than our distant and primitive past. A few hundred years ago women were dying left and right during child birth, and go back a bit farther, and babies start dying so frequently that we didn't even bother naming them until their first "name-day". Society is way bigger now, and we've got fundamentally bigger problems, but the average individual still tends to fare better as the result of our societal progress.
Fundamentally, I think, human nature is diverse, and is capable of diverging from one ideal standard or way of doing things. We're rolling a hell of a lot of dice in modernity, and that's not without risk, but the rewards so far would be indescribably amazing in the eyes of our ancestors.
So, there's no way around it. Progress is intrinsically meaningful both to the individual and society at large. "Therefore", we must focus squarely on progress at all "costs".
Quoting VagabondSpectre
What do you mean by "risk" here?
Thanks.
We shouldn't draw an absolute from a generalization (not all generalizations are inaccurate, but they're by definition not absolutely precise; there may be exceptions).
Progress has tended to be good, and in so far as we want more of it, we're impelled to chase after it. There's no rule saying that we we need to keep improving ourselves and our societies, it just happens to be what we want to do (and the doing is a cathartic challenge).
Quoting Wallows
Well,doing things on fundamentally bigger scales (as opposed to more traditional balance with nature style of living) comes with unknown risks. Global warming is one notable example, and whether or not we can overcome it might decide whether all the trappings of modernity will have been worth it. In short, we might destroy or do lasting harm to ourselves as individuals or a species by constantly chasing progress, so if we're going to chase after it, we need to do it with open eyes and be aware of the risks.
Quoting VagabondSpectre
But, according to a famous economist, we're all dead in the long run. And, there's no incentive to internalizing externalities like carbon emissions, resulting in scenarios like global warming.
Depends on if you care about future humans (possibly your descendants).
Quoting Wallows
History informs us. I say that we're better off. Who says different?
I don't plan on having children. 'So what', one might say? But, I don't think it's a matter about caring about the welfare of our children that really counts here. We're going to do what we want regardless if we want it bad enough, that is.
Quoting VagabondSpectre
We might be getting off topic with these economic issues, as the OP was about philosophy squarely.
Different people will inevitably do different things. Even those who don't want children often want to leave the earth a better place than when they found it.
Quoting Wallows
Maybe philosophy changes with the times, on a kind of opportunistic basis. It either serves us or it doesn't. And those fields of study that don't continually advance are just waiting to be left behind, made irrelevant by something more desirable, more useful, and more persuasive.
Yeah, I'm in agreement here.
Quoting VagabondSpectre
Well, philosophy isn't qualified in dealing with these issues, rather than say some discipline like economics or some such dismal science, say. So, does that make philosophy, impotent? I think so.
Pretty much. Nothing to disagree with here.
Though, if philosophy is viewed as useless, by many, what can be said about the field? Some kind of PR campaign on the merits of philosophy is needed or what?
Not a reading recommendation but in Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress, Steven Pinker makes a good argument for progress.
I've been reading that some businesses are starting to provide standard philosophical training
to their employees (Apple or google, IIRC). They're trying to enhance the "knowledge economy" of their employees by helping them to understand things like ethical problems, ontological and epistemological questions, and the history of solved philosophical problems. They're hoping that they'll create more capable, creative, ethical, and self-organized employees that are better at problem solving (a more valuable asset, and a less severe liability). Whether or not the academic end of philosophy can be successfully deployed among the plebs is an interesting question... Time will tell!
Got no money; but, cool.
It sure isn't going to be. If progress can't be measured inside the field of philosophy, then I'm afraid we're stuck at square one.
Would you say that you yourself have managed to progress philosophically, since you began?
Yes, although I'm not quite sure what that has amounted to? Being more aware of logical fallacies or some such matter? Seems like a misguided claim to say,
"I have progressed philosophically",
Well, how so?
If an individual cannot make philosophical progress, then nor can societies or groups. But how do we measure it? Inexorably: subejctively.
Quoting Wallows
If philosophy does yield boons, then they must be able to flow to and through individuals, otherwise who cares? If philosophy can be deployed to make us more competent on the whole (by improving us as individuals) then I call that progress.
Interesting response.We could discuss the concepts of value and progress until our ears bleed or go deaf, but it is not the answer to the question(s) I put to you. And you know it. Why the avoidance ?
To track back:
Quoting Amity
I have been following the conversation between yourself and VagabondSpectre and found it helpful.
The questions I put to you were in connection with your personal progress or development through your reading(s) or understanding of Wittgenstein. You place him high on your list of 'favourite' philosophers.
So, you find him of some value then ? Even if is just to talk about him, or discuss his work, in this forum.
Quoting VagabondSpectre
I agree with that.
Keeping to Wittgenstein as a focus. How do you see him ? Where does he fit in to to general philosophical enquiry or your own enquiries about life ?
Did you even read or acknowledge the quotes by Fooloso4 ?
Here is the end of one from Wittgenstein's Culture and Value
'...For me on the contrary clarity, perspicuity are valuable in themselves. I am not interested in constructing a building, so much as in having a perspicuous view of the foundations of typical buildings.’
What is your understanding of that ?
If you don't have one, then why don't you take the opportunity to ask. Slow down.
That is what personal progress or development involves. Not just asking but listening and reflecting.
It might change your or others minds, attitudes or behaviour - or not.
We might not have an absolute end goal or purpose to measure progress against but philosophy is a process. Valuable in itself. I think.
Is there really any answer that would count as an answer? I'm not sure. While I do think I have made some progress in my own philosophical development, it has been slow and not really quantifiable. Last year, I had a spiritual experience while pondering over the seventh proposition of the Tractatus. I was actually coming off most of my meds, to be honest; but, the feeling was profound in that I had a flash of insight as to what philosophy really means. As I understood it, progress in philosophy, as in any other subject is if something has been learned. But, philosophy is peculiar in that ideas and conclusions are organic and not trite or tautologous like mathematics or some other science. Meaning, that it's almost as if one has to live through something via experience to understand it in philosophy. Wittgenstein talks about forms of life in philosophy, which would be the closest comparison.
Quoting Amity
Sure, why not? But, really there's no winning strategy in philosophy. It's kind of a stagnant pond that needs holes drilled in it during the winter to keep the fish alive. Sorry for the horrible analogy! Or to put this another way, my reading of Wittgenstein has led me to my own awareness of my limits. To surpass one's limits is to understand where they lay in the first place. Without that knowledge, then nothing new can be learned or lived through.
Philosophy is important in that one has to understand the limits of their own world to be able to reach out and assimilate new things into one's world-view.