I’m still mulling this over, but I have come around to the view that you’re right about what you’re calling “agency” not being something that could be removed without disservice to the promotion of progress, and that you’ve got the best way of framing it. If I take your suggestion of viewing “agency” from a more compatibilist point of view—and thanks for this nudge—I find it all far more tractable. I’m a big fan of W.V.O. Quine, and I believe he would have supported your pointing to “agency” as useful in this context. Even if “agency” means not freedom in some metaphysical sense, we have to grant that the removal of constraints on human actions is going to be better rather than worse for human progress.
And I think you have the right rhetorical approach to the question. Talking about freedom as we have for millennia, in the metaphysical sense, is more comprehensible because of how we’re wired.
...but I can’t resist observing that if, in the background, what’s going on is something determined then the actual mechanism for the promotion of progress does seem to collapse into something more like far from equilibrium free energy maximizations, of the sort popular among techno-optimists at the moment. Not for no reason it’s called “compatibilism” I suppose!
Yes, one of my problems with compatibilism is, if determinism is true, then in some sense none of this matters? Like, why bother talking about progress when the entire trajectory of the future is already predetermined and literally nothing will change it?
For some this might be too fine a distinction, but for me understanding ontology has always been important, and I find compatabilism useful for its pragmatic distinction between ontology and any prescriptivist philosophy (like positivism). A compatibilist can accept that we don’t have free will and yet endorse the instrumental value of rhetoric that promotes freedom — what does it matter that under the hood it’s just thermodynamics? One can’t escape the illusion of free will even if and when you believe it is an illusion and try hard to do so. But pragamatism is a common thread running through compatabilist ontology and prescriptivism, and my aesthetic preference (? prejudice? precommitment) is to believing in things that work even when I don’t understand how or why.
So there might very well be a point in talking about progress even if we’re not sure whether or how it would have happened had we never existed.
I’m still mulling this over, but I have come around to the view that you’re right about what you’re calling “agency” not being something that could be removed without disservice to the promotion of progress, and that you’ve got the best way of framing it. If I take your suggestion of viewing “agency” from a more compatibilist point of view—and thanks for this nudge—I find it all far more tractable. I’m a big fan of W.V.O. Quine, and I believe he would have supported your pointing to “agency” as useful in this context. Even if “agency” means not freedom in some metaphysical sense, we have to grant that the removal of constraints on human actions is going to be better rather than worse for human progress.
And I think you have the right rhetorical approach to the question. Talking about freedom as we have for millennia, in the metaphysical sense, is more comprehensible because of how we’re wired.
...but I can’t resist observing that if, in the background, what’s going on is something determined then the actual mechanism for the promotion of progress does seem to collapse into something more like far from equilibrium free energy maximizations, of the sort popular among techno-optimists at the moment. Not for no reason it’s called “compatibilism” I suppose!
Thanks.
Yes, one of my problems with compatibilism is, if determinism is true, then in some sense none of this matters? Like, why bother talking about progress when the entire trajectory of the future is already predetermined and literally nothing will change it?
For some this might be too fine a distinction, but for me understanding ontology has always been important, and I find compatabilism useful for its pragmatic distinction between ontology and any prescriptivist philosophy (like positivism). A compatibilist can accept that we don’t have free will and yet endorse the instrumental value of rhetoric that promotes freedom — what does it matter that under the hood it’s just thermodynamics? One can’t escape the illusion of free will even if and when you believe it is an illusion and try hard to do so. But pragamatism is a common thread running through compatabilist ontology and prescriptivism, and my aesthetic preference (? prejudice? precommitment) is to believing in things that work even when I don’t understand how or why.
So there might very well be a point in talking about progress even if we’re not sure whether or how it would have happened had we never existed.