Letters

44 Historically Speaking March/April 2007 Letters Progress versus Directionality Regarding the exchange between Ricardo Duchesne and David Christian in Historically Speaking (November/December 2006), I think Christian missed some of what Duchesne was getting at. Christian says "the word 'progress' should be avoided because it . . . assumes that there is a direction to human history," and "it also assumes that we can evaluate that direction ." I think Duchesne's point was that, as a matter of fact, we can and do evaluate different states of civilization, and, as a matter of fact, we do consider some states better than others. And when we look at history we can and do see periods of progress, stagnation, or decline in respect to those values. There is nothing inappropriate about this, any more than condemning slavery or the Holocaust is inappropriate, relativism be damned. Therefore, "assuming" there is progress relative to actual standards diat actual human beings actually apply to life is not a valid reason to abandon die word or even the historical investigation of "progress." To reject our evaluations of life is to reject our humanity, to turn us into heardess robots who have no values whatsoever. That's hardly an attitude to recommend, not in a historian, not in anyone. By valuing (and tiius creating ) progress, scientists, for example, improve medical care and earthquake safety. So, too, it is only because historians value producing the most accurate and error-free memory of the past, and value increasing our knowledge of die past, diat we make any progress in either. That progress is not an illusion. Nor are the values it is measured against. Since having values is what separates humanity from rocks and plants and robots, there will always be historical progress, stagnation, or decline relative to the values humans embrace. There is no sense in dismissing this fact. Indeed, even by Christian's standards, progress (i.e., universally desirable increases) in access to food, shelter, and health care, can be objectively measured, and yet diese are components of what we "evaluatively" call "quality of life." Therefore, progress (positive directionality) is possible and often actually exists in "quality of life." We care about this directionality because all human beings value positive improvements in "quality of life," which we value more than, say, increases in the population of syphilis carriers, another "objective fact" in which directionality is objectively measurable . Contrary to Christian's claim that "we know of no universal ethical standards on which" our evaluations "might be based," it is a universal fact that all human beings consider access to food, shelter, and health care to be a moral good (unlike , say, the spread of syphilis). They might disFirst Church of Christ, Scientist, New York City, ca. 1909. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division [reproduction number, LC-USZ62-119992]. agree about what the ediically proper way is for a civilization or each individual to acquire these things, but they all agree that achieving them is a moral good. Even Christian Scientists, who reject scientific health care, nevertheless regard dieir own version of health care as a moral good, and so, too, access to food and shelter. Once we acknowledge that diere are obviously universal human values (due to our shared biology and psychology, common aspects of environment, and culturally universal social structures), a full slate of universal moral values follows necessarily from the actual facts of the world. Thus all "disagreements" about moral values are really disagreements about objective facts. For example, Christian Scientists only disagree with medical scientists as to what constitutes morally appropriate health care because they disagree with medical scientists regarding objective facts of die world, such as whedier diere is a God who hates medicine and will reward those who shun it with an eternal life in paradise. Every ethical disagreement reduces to some comparable disagreement about objective facts. I demonstrate this (and show what morals universally follow from the objective facts that can be empirically demonstrated ) in my book Sense and Goodness without God: A Defense of Metaphysical Naturalism (2005). Thus when Christian imagines presenting a case for progress to a Paleolithic society, he reaches the wrong conclusion. If we showed the progress made...