:The epistemic approach to liberalism not only clarifies some of the core features of progress-based arguments for liberty. For two reasons it provides grounds for doubting those arguments’ persuasiveness. The first reason emerges from the epistemic liberal explanation of economic recessions and of social regress as necessary consequences of our enjoying the individual liberty to adapt to our circumstances. Precisely because it secures personal choice with respect to the ends of life and the means to pursue them, liberty must be construed as at best necessary for the imperfect and costly realization of the interest individuals may have in personal advancement. Second, and in revealing the underlying logic of the economic and cultural processes that liberty makes possible, epistemic liberalism shows that it is to the notion of complex adaptation that we must look when seeking to evaluate the overall or aggregate results of liberty. Crucially, however, this means rejecting the notion of progress as fit to perform this ethico-historical evaluative role.

中文翻译：

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反对进步的自由

: 对自由主义的认识论方法不仅阐明了基于进步的自由论点的一些核心特征。出于两个原因，它为怀疑这些论点的说服力提供了依据。第一个原因来自对经济衰退和社会倒退的认知自由主义解释，认为这是我们享受个人自由以适应我们的环境的必然后果。正是因为它确保了个人对生命目标和追求目标的手段的选择，所以必须将自由解释为充其量是实现个人在个人进步中可能拥有的利益的不完美和昂贵的必要条件。其次，在揭示自由使之成为可能的经济和文化进程的基本逻辑时，认知自由主义表明，在寻求评估自由的整体或总体结果时，我们必须关注复杂适应的概念。然而，至关重要的是，这意味着拒绝将进步的概念视为适合扮演这种伦理历史评估角色。