[superqwert]

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]

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]

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]

>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.

[kkwteh]

I don’t know if it’s that far off. Our current notions of progress haven't allowed us to avoid our current condition of extreme indebtedness and financial insecurity and I think we're at a point where we need to reexamine these notions. I don't think the author does enough to do that.

[anongraddebt]

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]

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.

[hacknat]

I definitely wasn’t making the argument that anyone was arguing for slavery, just that notional definitions of moral progress are much more complicated than simple economic metrics. There is so much more that goes into what is “right” and “wrong” than pure economic level, at a micro or macro level.

Now you might say I’m making a straw man of their argument, but then what are they even arguing then? I can’t figure it out. What does “advancement” mean? They alluded to social sciences having various measure of human happiness is and that a “Progress Studies” department could synthesize these metrics into... what exactly? Policy proposals? A religion? Metrics of human well being assume an underlying framework of morale agreement to begin with.

You simply cannot philosophically convert an objective metric into an “ought” without making a ton of morale assumptions. You cannot prove that your morality and values are better than anyone else’s because you will infinitely regress into definitions if what “good” means.

[anongraddebt]

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.

[MetalGuru]

He’s not saying anyone is trying to argue that slavery is ok. He’s using it as hyperbole that without a specific definition, progress can’t be measured objectively.

[ziddoap]

An appeal to extremes is not the only way to get the point across.

[setr]

Its just an efficient one.

By pulling to the extreme, you can remove a lot of the smaller and subtler points of the argument, to get pointedly at a core issue.

Unless of course the recipient tries to (re-)introduce irrelevant aspects of the fact that you tried to be pointed...

[infinite_luck]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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

More:

http://faculty.econ.ucdavis.edu/faculty/gclark/a_farewell_to...

[rohan_shah]

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?

[dredmorbius]

It's ... complicated. And there's more to the dynamic than that.

One of Clark's observations is that modernity -- not just capitalism, but technology, logistics, healthcare, interventions, etc. -- not only create poverty but make it survivable. A reason that persistant conditions of abject misery are sustained for lifetimes and generations is that they don't simply kill those affected (by disease, starvation, accidents, warfare) in a few weeks or months.

His book is part of a series edited by Joel Mokyr on economic history and progress (much of what Cowan and Collison are calling for), well worth looking at titles. Robert J. Gordon's The Rise and Fall of American Growth is another title, and more generally in 3what I'd consider a larger literature including Polanyi's The Great Transformation and Joseph Needham's work exploring what's come to be known as "the Needham question" -- why China, which developed a phenomenal set of technology and scientific knowledge, catalogued exhaustively in Needham's Science and Civilisation in China, didn't then proceed to have an industrial revolution similar to that which eventually occurred in England.

I think you're also absolutely correct to call out the claims made for capitalism -- that it elevates everyone out of poverty (the poorest billions have actually lost financial wealth in recent years), that it's an engine of creativity (many inventors died broke or broken, many inventions came from uncompensated sources, including famously the one mention of either technology or steam power in Smith's Wealth of Nations -- a boy optimising steam engine function because he wanted to play with his friends), and numerous others.

The contrast between price behaviour of rents vs. wages is very well discussed, going back to Smith, who also discusses the dynamics of poverty in economic growth and decline.

But yes: the orthodox economic theology appears to have several significant gaps with reality. Including though not limited to the behaviour of poverty under market-capitalist-property systems.

[pcmaffey]

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]

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]

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.