My to-do list continues to hover around 15 items. Yesterday I struck three things off the list, but added three new things. It’s been like that for a few weeks now, and peering into the future reveals no respite. All of this adds up to a slow time for blogging.
But, before I return to my ivory basement, I have some questions.
Does progress imply a goal? If you’re a progressive are you progressing toward something? Does progress have a final condition?
yes, progress implies a goal, or at least an improvement (which itself means that there is some idealized standard against which change is measured).
but don't beat yourself up, Dave. I've felt the same way lately.
(Oh, I'm not beating myself up. The progress question is separate from my busy-ness comments.)
I'm trying to parse out the conservative argument against Obama and progressivism, etc. This conflation of progressivism and socialism goes back at least to Hayek. It seems like most popular conservatives "know" this but don't articulate it well.
Plus, some conservatives (like Disraeli and Russell Kirk) accept that there can be a balance between progress and tradition.
However, I'm still not sure if progress must be teleological. Popper argues that progress doesn't have to be a part of an overarching plan, and I think that's right, but reducing the idea of progress to its most discrete, situational elements strikes me as a little weird.
So, I'm trying to wrap my head around the idea of an abderitic progress.
(Abderitic is Kant's term for a historical trajectory that is neither the lot of humanity improving, nor the lot of humanity getting worse, but is rather a chaotic combination of things getting better and worse. Kant argued that this was the most ridiculous way to portray history, and that historians have a moral responsibility to demonstrate that things are getting better; i.e. progressing.)
OK, what about software iterations? They progress from one version to the next, but are they measured against an idealized standard?