Some reflections on his reflections. A lot of good stuff, but I'd like to question the idea that philosophies, enlightened (pro-reason and pro-science) or otherwise, are a big causal force in human progress or evolution in general. They appear to me more like after-thoughts, a reflection.Quillette, Steven Pinker | Enlightenment Wars: Some Reflections on ‘Enlightenment Now,’ One Year Later
I do think ideas have a causal force and can be consequential, but they are usually highly overrated. Correlation equals not causation, and I'd say this is particularly true for ideas, philosophies like enlightenment thinking. It is totally unclear how much of a causal force ideas/philosophies actually were and are amidst that huge forest of multi-mega variables non-linear causal web in which they occur. Very similar to how CO2 is considered the driving force of climate change without much proof available for that claim: the data actually scream uncertainty and impenetrable complexity.
It seems unlikely that by sheer intellectual insight, where reality is seen from an abstracted "above" with a box filled with empirically collected data to be analysed, people start to change behavior. Direct their actions towards a new goal after they drew their conclusions sitting on that bright enlightened cloud.
I do think he is rock solid correct about one thing: empirical data and empirical experience is the driving motor of what he identified as the enlightenment evolution. What he does not say however and what I would like to add, is that all human behavior is driven by empirical data, empirical experience. Always. And it is true for all animals. No organism is able to be non-empirical. To function in their world, they have to be empirical because that is what sensory systems are. To "hypothesize" their best next move, all animals rely on empirical experience that occurred in the past. This knowledge<->action tandem got automated into reliable reflexive processes and behaviors where possible.
Reality is always a changing configuration of similar yet different circumstances so the need remains for behavioral flexibility, a "creative anticipation" of what occurs from moment to moment, day to day, month, years, eons... During this process old automated tricks can become obsolete while new tricks need to be learned. New tricks will be (partially) automated after they were proven useful enough times. This was true before "the enlightenment" for all organisms of all times. Never was it true that all those old tricks disposed and new tricks learned by any organism were the result of abstracted reflections, conceptual ideas.. philosophies. Generated on a bright cloud by intellectuals.
All behavior and change of behavior was, is and will be the result of immediate and changing circumstance necessitating solutions for the realities as they exist moment to moment. What is a solution of course depends on what the problem was: this is different for every animal, species, plant or microbe living sometime somewhere, from moment to moment, as different species.
When a new solution was created it was a moment of enlightenment for those organisms. Hurray! But most likely also the first step towards a new dark age where new solutions will be needed for new types of problems.
"Creating solutions" of course smacks like anthropomorphism. As-if organisms congregate and have their brightest intellectuals and scientists dig for solutions. But nothing is further from the truth. For millions of years organisms managed to create "bright" solutions for very "dark" problems without much thinking, not much self-awareness aqa consciousness (highly overrated imo), let alone a PhD in any frontal-lobed human endeavor on ivy league universities.
