General Comments on John Gray's view on progress.

These are left here for general commenting (at some point they will be made into a proper blogpost)

The distinction he is trying to make ulimately leads to the idea that something, if it can be lost, was never improved. The problem of progress is not one of seeing where preogress is and is not. It is one about changing our society in ways that can preserve the things that we improve and allows to correct the errors that we make, the fact that this is tentative and not guarenteed, is no argument against the fact that it is the best method we have, or that progress happens. It is also not to the point to suggest that just because new errors are made in every advance, that no progress was made. Problems are always going to be with the human race; it is utopian to think that every problem that we solve, should lead to no further problems. Gray is just a crypto-utopian attacking piece-meal engieering for presumptions that only utopianists (which gray shares) hold; utopianists believe that as soon as you solve all the problems of current human life, that there will never be any more problems and therefore if there are still problems, there has been no progress or if the progress can be lost, there has also been no progress. This is grays view also. It is mistaken and deeply problematic viewpoint, it denies human ability to correct his own errors, and if this is true, then we cannot even try, because it is futile.


  The first enlightenement happened in Greece. Much of the knowledge there was lost for years and not just their ethical or moral views, when we rediscovered this knowledge we had an advance, in logic, in science. It is not set in stone that we will keep these things.

 Another confusion he makes seems to be his discussion on post-modernism, as though relativism was relevant to the idea that some knowledge can be lost and others cannot be. He seems to be saying that there are no moral ideas that solve problems better than other moral ideas, and that therefore there is no objective way to evaluate them. This is mistaken. Some moral views are just better and solving moral problems than others. Just because it is hard to preserve these moral ideas does not mean that there is no progress. Progress itself can be lost. But progress can also happen, and it has happened. I can speak of two progresses in moral thinking (there are probably more). Socrates argument against euthyphro about goodness and Popper's political innovation which turned political thinking on its head (especially the contractarian tradition) from "who should rule" to "how do we get rid, without violence, of those in power who misrule " these two innovations, have striking consequences for moral and political theorising, and they are better ideas objectively. Just because they have been largely ignored, or confined to academic squabbling, does not mean that these ideas aren't an improvement on earlier ideas, and even current ones.

Society is difficult to make more civilized, but it will always be that way. Does not mean there is not progress.

  There are resurgences of atrological thinking. The fact that people still think that truth is manfiest, or that data speaks for itself, was the same error that astrologers made. Francis Bacon's own methods of science would make astrology a science (even though he himself did not like astrology) this also goes for logical positivism and any variation thereof. SO there was resurgence in the fundemental misconceptions, and the only reason these people could fight against astrology was not for any rational reason, but simply because there was a concensus on it being bogus, and so they could get away with infinging their own standards of rationality, because who would argue for astrology right?