The Nature of Moral Progress: Definitions, Types and Measures

John Danaher

Philosophical Disquisitions

Originally posted 24 AUG 22

Moral progress is something to be celebrated. But what is it, exactly? In answer to that question, many people point to paradigmatic cases of moral progress: the abolition of slavery, the extension of legal rights to women and racial minorities, the decriminalisation of homosexuality, and so on. But what is it that unites these cases? What makes them all instances of moral progress? Can we identify progress as it happens or does it only become obvious in retrospect?  These are important questions. They are important from a social perspective since past episodes of moral progress have improved the state of the world for many people. We might like to accelerate such progress in the future. They are also important from an individual perspective since we want to be on the right side of history. We don’t want to be reactionary, conservative, relics of the past. At least, most of us don’t.

But it is not always easy to say what moral progress is or to understand how it comes about. Philosophers and social scientists have been studying this topic for some time and there is considerable disagreement about what it is and whether it exists. Indeed, as some academic commentators have noted “for much of the 20th century, it was taken as a sign of moral progress that we had stopped believing in it” (Sauer et al 2021).

Still, we can say some things about the nature of moral progress. In particular, following a recent review by Hanno Sauer, Charlie Blunden, Cecilie Eriksen and Paul Rehren, we can say something about: (i) the definition of moral progress; (ii) the different forms of moral progress; and (iii) the epistemic challenge of identifying episodes of moral progress. In what follows, I will consider each of these in more detail. In doing so, I am inspired, but not constrained, by what Sauer and his colleagues have to say. Much of what I write will summarise their insights; but some of what I write will expand upon or criticise what they have to say. It should be obvious when the latter is happening.

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From Measuring Moral Progress section

And therein lies the rub. The measurement problem arises from the fact that there may be too many measuring sticks and they might not all reach the same verdict about a particular instance of moral change. What’s more, these measuring sticks might be contested, with some groups preferring one over another. The demoralisation of homosexuality might be progressive when measured against the values of autonomy and individual well-being but, according to conservative critics, would be regressive (or transgressive) when measured against the values of purity, naturalness, and social cohesion.

And the problem may go even deeper than this. If moral measuring sticks are themselves subject to progressive moral change, then it might be even more difficult to classify instances of change as progressive. You have to have some fixed set of values against which to measure change as progressive. If nothing is fixed, then all progress seems illusory (or at least highly contingent and relativistic).

These are not new problems. They have been part and parcel of moral philosophy for a long time, but they do affect the study of moral progress. I tend to think there is no entirely satisfactory resolution to them. The best we can do is to be clear about the measuring sticks we are using.

The blog post is here.

Most Americans don’t believe they need God to be good: poll

Leonardo Blair
ChristianPost.com
Originally posted 22 July 20

Here is an excerpt:

While 70% of Americans still believe that religion is either “somewhat important” or “very important” in their lives, more than half (54%) of Americans said they believe God is “not necessary to be moral or have good values.”

Meanwhile, 44% of American respondents said they believe God is necessary to “be moral and have good values.”

Respondents on the ideological right were found to be significantly more likely to say it is necessary to believe in God to be a moral person and have good values compared to those on the political left in 15 of the 34 countries surveyed.

The largest gap between the ideological right and left exists in the United States.

While only 24% of American respondents who identified themselves as leaning more to the left politically said it is necessary to believe in God to be moral and have good values, 37% of centrists agreed.

But when it comes to respondents who lean to the right politically, more than twice the percentage of those on the left (63%) agreed that it is necessary to believe in God to be moral and have good values.

The info is here.

Is there such a thing as moral progress?

John Danaher
Philosophical Disquisitions
Originally posted March 18, 2019

We often speak as if we believe in moral progress. We talk about recent moral changes, such as the legalisation of gay marriage, as ‘progressive’ moral changes. We express dismay at the ‘regressive’ moral views of racists and bigots. Some people (I’m looking at you Steven Pinker) have written long books that defend the idea that, although there have been setbacks, there has been a general upward trend in our moral attitudes over the course of human history. Martin Luther King once said that the arc of the moral universe is long but bend towards justice.

But does moral progress really exist? And how would we know if it did? Philosophers have puzzled over this question for some time. The problem is this. There is no doubt that there has been moral change over time, and there is no doubt that we often think of our moral views as being more advanced than those of our ancestors, but it is hard to see exactly what justifies this belief. It seems like you would need some absolute moral standard or goal against which you can measure moral change to justify that belief. Do we have such a thing?

In this post, I want offer some of my own, preliminary and underdeveloped, thoughts on the idea of moral progress. I do so by first clarifying the concept of moral progress, and then considering whether and when we can say that it exists. I will suggest that moral progress is real, and we are at least sometimes justified in saying that it has taken place. Nevertheless, there are some serious puzzles and conceptual difficulties with identifying some forms of moral progress.

The info is here.

Tech giants are seeking help on AI ethics. Where they seek it matters.

Dave Gershgorn
quartz.com
Originally posted March 30, 2019

Here is an excerpt:

Tech giants are starting to create mechanisms for outside experts to help them with AI ethics—but not always in the ways ethicists want. Google, for instance, announced the members of its new AI ethics council this week—such boards promise to be a rare opportunity for underrepresented groups to be heard. It faced criticism, however, for selecting Kay Coles James, the president of the conservative Heritage Foundation. James has made statements against the Equality Act, which would protect sexual orientation and gender identity as federally protected classes in the US. Those and other comments would seem to put her at odds with Google’s pitch as being a progressive and inclusive company. (Google declined Quartz’s request for comment.)

AI ethicist Joanna Bryson, one of the few members of Google’s new council who has an extensive background in the field, suggested that the inclusion of James helped the company make its ethics oversight more appealing to Republicans and conservative groups. Also on the council is Dyan Gibbens, who heads drone company Trumbull Unmanned and sat next to Donald Trump at a White House roundtable in 2017.

The info is here.

Individual Moral Development and Moral Progress

Schinkel, A. & de Ruyter, D.J.
Ethical Theory and Moral Practice (2017) 20: 121.
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10677-016-9741-6

Abstract

At first glance, one of the most obvious places to look for moral progress is in individuals, in particular in moral development from childhood to adulthood. In fact, that moral progress is possible is a foundational assumption of moral education. Beyond the general agreement that moral progress is not only possible but even a common feature of human development things become blurry, however. For what do we mean by ‘progress’? And what constitutes moral progress? Does the idea of individual moral progress presuppose a predetermined end or goal of moral education and development, or not? In this article we analyze the concept of moral progress to shed light on the psychology of moral development and vice versa; these analyses are found to be mutually supportive. We suggest that: moral progress should be conceived of as development that is evaluated positively on the basis of relatively stable moral criteria that are the fruit and the subject of an ongoing conversation; moral progress does not imply the idea of an end-state; individual moral progress is best conceived of as the development of various components of moral functioning and their robust integration in a person’s identity; both children and adults can progress morally - even though we would probably not speak in terms of progress in the case of children - but adults’ moral progress is both more hard-won and to a greater extent a personal project rather than a collective effort.

Download the paper here.

Is utilitarian sacrifice becoming more morally permissible?

Ivar R.Hannikainen, Edouard Machery, & Fiery A.Cushman
Cognition

Volume 170, January 2018, Pages 95-101

Abstract

A central tenet of contemporary moral psychology is that people typically reject active forms of utilitarian sacrifice. Yet, evidence for secularization and declining empathic concern in recent decades suggests the possibility of systematic change in this attitude. In the present study, we employ hypothetical dilemmas to investigate whether judgments of utilitarian sacrifice are becoming more permissive over time. In a cross-sectional design, age negatively predicted utilitarian moral judgment (Study 1). To examine whether this pattern reflected processes of maturation, we asked a panel to re-evaluate several moral dilemmas after an eight-year interval but observed no overall change (Study 2). In contrast, a more recent age-matched sample revealed greater endorsement of utilitarian sacrifice in a time-lag design (Study 3). Taken together, these results suggest that today’s younger cohorts increasingly endorse a utilitarian resolution of sacrificial moral dilemmas.

The article is here.

Here is a portion of the Discussion section:

A vibrant discussion among philosophers and cognitive scientists has focused on distinguishing the virtues and pitfalls of the human moral faculty (Bloom, 2017; Greene, 2014; Singer, 2005). On a pessimistic note, our results dovetail with evidence about the socialization and development of recent cohorts (e.g., Shonkoff et al., 2012): Utilitarian judgment has been shown to correlate with Machiavellian and psychopathic traits (Bartels & Pizarro, 2011), and also with the reduced capacity to distinguish felt emotions (Patil & Silani, 2014). At the same time, leading theories credit highly acclaimed instances of moral progress to the exercise of rational scrutiny over prevailing moral norms (Greene, 2014; Singer, 2005), and the persistence of parochialism and prejudice to the unbridled command of intuition (Bloom, 2017). From this perspective, greater disapproval of intuitive deontological principles among recent cohorts may stem from the documented rise in cognitive abilities (i.e., the Flynn effect; see Pietschnig & Voracek, 2015) and foreshadow an expanding commitment to the welfare-maximizing resolution of contemporary moral challenges.

Neuroexistentialism: Third-Wave Existentialism

Owen Flanagan and Gregg D. Caruso
In Neuroexistentialism: Meaning, Morals, and Purpose in the Age of Neuroscience edited by Flanagan and Caruso

Here is an excerpt:

      The scientific image is also disturbing for other reasons. It maintains, for example, that
the mind is the brain (see fn.4), that humans are animals, that how things seem is not how they
are, that introspection is a poor instrument for revealing how the mind works, that there is no
ghost in the machine, no Cartesian theatre where consciousness comes together, that our sense of
self may in part be an illusion, and that the physical universe is the only universe that there is and
it is causally closed. Many fear that if this is true, then it is the end of the world as we know it, or
knew it under the humanistic regime or image. Neuroexistentialism is one way of expressing
whatever anxiety comes from accepting the picture of myself as an animal (the Darwin part) and
that my mind is my brain, my mental states are brain states (the neuro- part). Taken together the
message is that humans are 100% animal. One might think that that message was already
available in Darwin. What does neuroscience add? It adds evidence, we might say, that Darwin’s
idea is true, and that it is, as Daniel Dennett says “a dangerous idea” (1995). Most people in the
West still hold on to the idea that they have a non-physical soul or mind. But as neuroscience
advances it becomes increasing clear that there is no place in the brain for res cogitans to be nor
any work for it to do. The universe is causally closed and the mind is the brain.

The book chapter is here.

Note to readers: This book chapter, while an introduction to the entire volume, is excellent scholarship.  There are a number of chapters that will likely appeal to clinical psychologists.

Once and Future Sins

By Stefan Klein and Stephen Cave
Aeon Magazine
Originally published March 24, 2015

Here is an excerpt:

But before we start basking in the glow of spreading goodness, we must realise that these changing values have a price. For many of us, such changes would mean sharing or giving up privileges that we have long enjoyed, or admitting that our comfortable lifestyles are based on industries of exploitation, or otherwise recognising that we have in a hundred ways been wrong. This is not a message we rush to hear: there is a reason why prophets of new moralities – think of Socrates or Jesus – often end up dead at the hands of their own people.

We hope that debating the question of what we might be condemned for in 100 years is a way of easing that transition. To help get this debate going, below are four suggestions as to what we think we might be castigated for by our great-grandchildren. They are, we believe, natural extensions of the progress we have witnessed so far. Just as the suffragettes 100 years ago were campaigning for the revolution in women’s rights that we now enjoy, so there are people who are already pushing for these moral revolutions today (which is not to say that we two authors are already living up to them).

The entire article is here.

Are We Becoming Morally Smarter?

By Michael Shermer
Reason.com
Originally posted in March 2015 issue

Here is an excerpt:

Since the Enlightenment, humans have demonstrated dramatic moral progress. Almost everyone in the Western world today enjoys rights to life, liberty, property, marriage, reproduction, voting, speech, worship, assembly, protest, autonomy, and the pursuit of happiness. Liberal democracies are now the dominant form of governance, systematically replacing the autocracies and theocracies of centuries past. Slavery and torture are outlawed everywhere in the world (even if occasionally still practiced). The death penalty is on death row and will likely go extinct sometime in the 2020s. Violence and crime are at historic lows, and we have expanded the moral sphere to include more people as members of the human community deserving of rights and respect. Even some animals are now being considered as sentient beings worthy of moral consideration.

Abstract reasoning and scientific thinking are the crucial cognitive skills at the foundation of all morality. Consider the mental rotation required to implement the Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

The article is here.

Why Evolutionary Science Is The Key To Moral Progress

By Michael E. Price

This View of Life

Originally published July 16, 2013

Here is an excerpt:

Morality is centrally important to human affairs, for two main reasons. First, cross-culturally, the well-being of individuals is strongly affected by their moral standing: an individual held in high moral regard may be praised, rewarded, or celebrated as a hero, whereas one held in low regard may be admonished, ostracized, or put to death. Second, a society’s ability to compete with other societies may depend heavily on the content of its moral system: a moral system that successfully promotes values associated with economic and political competitiveness, for example, can be hugely advantageous to the society that hosts it. Our moral beliefs, then, have a critical impact on the fates of both the individuals we judge, and the societies to which we belong. 

The entire blog post is here.