Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Abstracts
1
Abstracts keynotes
(in chronological order)
2
Slavery, Carbon, and Moral Progress
Keynote Address - June 24th, 9:30
Dale Jamieson
New York University
dale.jamieson@nyu.edu
For more than a half century it has been understood that carbon emissions are a
threat to global climate, yet little effective action has been taken. Part of the reason is
because of the role of carbon in the global economy. Most of the ten largest
corporations in the world are in the fossil fuel business, fossil fuel production is central
to the economies of many (perhaps most) United Nations member states, and fossil fuels
can generally be said to be the life-blood of the global economy. How is it possible, it
may be asked, for there to be moral progress in the face of such economic
headwinds? The same question could have been asked about slavery. In 1805-1806, the
value of British West Indian sugar production equalled about 4% of the national income
of Great Britain. Yet in 1807 the British began a campaign to suppress the Atlantic slave
trade that cost 5,000 British lives and about 2% of national income annually for sixty
years. In this talk I examine this episode of moral progress in order to see what can be
learned that may be helpful in the campaign to abolish fossil fuels.
3
Moral Progress and Human Agency
Keynote Address June 24th, 14:00
Michelle Moody-Adams
Columbia University
moody-adams@columbia.edu
4
The Possibility of Moral Progress
Keynote Address June 25th, 9:30
5
Locating Value in Moral Progress
Keynote Address June 25th, 14:00
Toni Rnnow-Rasmussen
Lund University
toni.ronnow-rasmussen@fil.lu.se
6
Abstracts papers
(in alphabetical order)
Cultural moral progress despite biological moral decline? an empirical and ethical
investigation of the notion of moral progress (p. 26)
Eveline Gutzwiller, University of Luzern
Markus Christen, University of Zurich
Darcia Narvaez, University of Notre Dame
7
Is moral progress possible? a historical-philosophical perspective (p. 28)
A.M.R. de Dijn, University of Amsterdam
Refreshing a legal order: on the constructive role of tragic legal choices (p. 30)
Iris van Domselaar, University of Amsterdam
Moral Progress in Chinese Philosophy: Confucianism, Daoism and Buddhism (p. 36)
Hyun Hchsmann, East China Normal University
Supervenient Moral Causation: How Moral Facts Cause Moral Progress (p. 48)
Andres Luco, Nanyang Technology University
8
Can There Be Moral Progress Without Moral Realism? (p. 50)
Michael Lyons, University of Bristol
Wellbeing and time: Are we happier than we were ten thousand years ago? (p. 52)
Jason Marsh, St. Olaf College
Moral Progress and the Divine Command Theory: Can the Good become Better? (p.
55)
Annette Mosher, VU University
Hume's 'General Sense of Common Interest' and Conditions for Moral Progress (p.
63)
Bjrn Petersson, University of Lund
9
Dynamism in Legality: The Significance of Human Dignity in International Law (p.
67)
Stephen Riley, Utrecht University
Moral progress by increased empirical knowledge and real life experience (p. 78)
Thomas Schramme, University of Hamburg
Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc: Some Benefits of Rationalization (p. 85)
Jesse Summers, Duke University
10
Moral Progress and Moral Ignorance (p. 92)
Jan Willem Wieland, VU University Amsterdam
11
Varieties of Moral Improvement, Or Why Metaethical Constructivism
Must Explain Moral Progress
Caroline T. Arruda
The University of Texas
ctarruda@utep.edu
Among the available metaethical views, it would seem that moral realismin
particular moral naturalismmust grapple with the concept of moral progress. We see
this in the oft-used argument from disagreement against various moral realist views
(Mackie 1977; Shafer-Landau 1994).
My suggestion in this paper is that, surprisingly, metaethical constructivism has at
least as pressing a need to explain moral progress. There is significant debate over
whether metaethical constructivism, hereafter constructivism, is realist or anti-realist
about moral facts (Bagnoli 2002; 2013; Copp 2013; Enoch 2009a; 2009b; Street 2010;
Wallace 2010). For the moment, then, I will provide an ecumenical account of
constructivism, as I will show that constructivists views about the status of moral facts
does not mitigate the demand that it explain moral progress. Ecumenically speaking,
metaethical constructivism is the view that morality is underwritten by the practical
attitudes of agents. Those constructivists who fall closer to the realist side of the debate
argue that moral objectivity (and thus moral truth) is a product of what a practically
rational agent would endorse (Bagnoli 2013; Korsgaard 1986; 1996; 1997; 2008; 2008a;
2008b; 2009;1 ONeill 1989; Rawls 1999/1980; Wallace 2010).2 By contrast, those
constructivists who align themselves with moral anti-realism take, to use Sharon Streets
(2010) phrase, valuing to be underwritten by what creatures capable of valuing actually
or counterfactually would value. Why think, however, that constructivism must explain
moral progress?
Lets begin by defining moral progress. I take moral progress to be, minimally,
the opportunity to access and to act in light of moral facts of the matter, whether they
are mindindependent or -dependent. For the metaethical constructivist, however, I add
that moral progress ought also mean that agents come to be or could come to be
motivated to act in light of the right kind of moral judgments (Bagnoli 2002). This is
what I call the moral motivation requirement.
1
But compare with Hussain and Shah (2013).
2
This description does not distinguish between those forms of constructivism that are more robustly (or
perhaps purely) proceduralist (e.g., Rawls view) and those that are not (e.g., Korsgaards view). On this
issue, see Engstrom (2013).
12
Together I take this to mean that, for all forms of constructivism, moral progress
must be explained as form of moral improvement, or agents aspiring to be better sorts
of moral agents. In what moral improvement consists differs for various forms of
constructivism. Here I distinguish between three different versions of metaethical
constructivism: Humean constructivists as represented by Street (2008; 2010; 2012),
Kantian constitutivist constructivists as represented by
Korsgaard, and constructivists about practical reason as represented by Carla Bagnoli
(2002; 2013).3 I then show why each of these three forms of constructivism must explain
moral progress qua moral improvement and in what such improvement consists for each
view.
I begin with Humean constructivism (Street 2006; 2008; 2010). Recall that this
view is anti-realist (Street 2008; 2012). On this view, I argue, moral progress qua moral
improvement is local in that it may be directed only at certain kinds of attitudes that we
have as valuing creatures.
The pressure for moral improvement is self-generated insofar as it is a product of
taking stock of what we value, if indeed we decide to engage in such a procedure. In
this sense, this view meets what I have called the moral motivation requirement only by
the skin of its teeth. In this regard, Humean constructivism does not provide a stable
account of moral progress, given what kind of view of moral progress constructivists
must defend.
I then turn to consider Kantian constructivism, best represented by Korsgaards
(1986; 1996; 1997; 2008; 2008a; 2008b; 2009) Kantian constitutivism.4 Recall that Kantian
varieties of constructivism are closer to, if not squarely in the domain of, moral realism.5
I show that moral progress qua moral improvement on this view has three characteristics.
First, moral improvement must be global in that it requires that we improve upon the
conception of the self at which we aim. Second, it is generated by virtue of rational
pressure to be coherent, practically rational agents. Third, like Humean constructivism,
it has a difficult time meeting the moral motivation requirement.
The last version of constructivism that I consider is constructivism about practical
reason, best represented by Carla Bagnolis (2002; 2013) work. In contrast to the other
forms of constructivism discussed here, Bagnoli (2013:155) argues that constructivism is
not directly a view about morality. Rather, it a view about our practical knowledge of our
3
I limit the discussion to the above three forms of constructivism, setting aside contractualist forms of
constructivism since contractualism is about a group of idealized rational agents and not individuals
agents themselves.
4
I set aside contractualist varieties of Kantian constructivism for reasons that I make clear in footnote 3.
5
This characterization, as I note earlier, is up for debate.
13
self-legislating capacities. In this sense, this view does not require a strong view about
moral improvement. Given that it is a view about practical reason, however, it entails a
view about the outer constraints on what constitutes moral improvement. Namely, our
moral improvement must be consistent with our improvement as practically rational,
self-legislating beings. It also must retain strong commitment to what I have called the
moral motivation requirement.
I conclude by evaluating which view of constructivism is best able to account for
moral improvement. I argue that Bagnolis constructivism, or constructivism about
practical reason, provides the best means for explaining moral improvement while
Kantian constructivism has the most difficult time doing so.
14
The Evanescence of Moral Progress
Rachelle Bascara
Birbeck College
r.bascara@bbk.ac.uk
16
Ethics and etiquette
Sandy Berkovski
Bilkent University
sandy.berkovski@gmail.com
18
Pigments of Reality: Moral Cognition, Political Ethics and Linguistic
Epistemology
Matteo Bonotti
Queens University Belfast
m.bonotti@qub.ac.uk
Yael Peled
McGill University
yael.peled@mcgill.ca
6
Kymlicka and Patten, 2003: 14-16.
7
Rawls, 2005.
8
Fricker, 2007.
9
Gumperz and Levinson, 1992: 33.
10
Wierzbicka, 2006: 141-170.
11
Wierzbicka, 1997: 248-253.
19
humanity)12. Such concepts are not beyond the understanding of individuals who do
not speak English, Japanese, or Bantu. Rather, it is simply that native English, Japanese
or Bantu speakers have the respective ethical notion readily-encoded in their language,
therefore requiring fewer cognitive resources for accessing and processing them in their
localized semantic environment.
This recent cutting-edge strand of research, across a broad range of disciplinary
perspectives, offers normative political theorists an innovative angle on the interface
between ethics, moral cognition and language. As such, it offers a framework that
combines the normative theorising of plurilingual societies with a growing empirical and
experimental body of work across the humanities, social sciences and natural sciences.
This combined framework established in the paper therefore draws, in addition to core
works in normative political theory, on the intellectual history of language (particularly
Humboldt and Herder), as well as on current research in psycholinguistics and cognitive
linguistics (e.g. Lakoff and Lucy), linguistic anthropology (Wierzbicka and Everett) and
neuroethics (Costa et al.).
More specifically, the paper explores documented and potential linguistic
relativity effects on moral cognition in plurilingual societies, and analyses the
implications that such effects have on contemporary thought in political and applied
ethics. It argues for the necessity to establish a more epistemically-informed analytical
frameworks in normative political theory, in order to overcome the danger of epistemic
linguistic injustice (the failure to consider moral concepts embedded in less prominent
languages as possessing equal epistemic status with those embedded in English, German
or French as a source of valid and important knowledge), and fine-tune core notions in
the discipline such as democratic deliberation and public reason. It likewise argues that
greater sensitivity to linguistic relativity effects on real-world human communication and
relationability is likely to generate benefits to the lives of pluralist societies that are
intellectual and practical alike.
References:
- Costa, A., et al. (2014). Your Morals Depend on Language. PLoS ONE 9(4):
e94842.
- Everett, D. (2009). Don't Sleep, There are Snakes: Life and Language in the
Amazonian Jungle. New York: Pantheon Books.
- Fricker, M. (2007). Epistemic Injustice: Power and the Ethics of Knowing. Oxford:
Oxford University Press.
12
Ramose, 2002; Louw, 2006.
20
- Gumperz, J. J., Levinson, S. C. (1992). Rethinking Linguistic Relativity. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
- Herder, J. G. v. (1999). Philosophical Writings (ed. Forster, M. N.). Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
- Humboldt, W. v. (1999)[1863]. On Language: On the Diversity of Human Language
Construction and its Influence on the Mental Development of the Human Species.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- Kymlicka, W., and Patten, A. (2003). Introduction: Language Rights and Political
Theory: Contexts, Issues and Approaches. In Language Rights and Political Theory
(eds. Kymlicka, W., and Patten, A.). Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1-52.
- Lakoff, G. (1990). Women, Fire and Dangerous Things: What Categories Reveal
about the Mind. Illinois: Chicago University Press.
- Louw, D. J. (2006). The African Concept of Ubuntu and Restorative Justice. In
Handbook of Restorative Justice: A Global Perspective (eds. Sullivan, D., and Tifft,
L.). New York: Routledge, 161-173.
- Lucy, J. A. (1992). Language Diversity and Thoughts: A Reformulation of the
Linguistic Relativity Hypothesis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- Morton, M. (1989). Herder and the Poetics of Thought: Unity and Diversity in On
Diligence in Several Learned Languages. State College: Pennsylvania State
University.
- Ramose, M. B. (2002). The Ethics of Ubuntu. In Philosophy from Africa 2 (eds.
Coetzee, P. H. and Roux, A. P. J.). Cape Town: Oxford University Press, 324-330.
- Rawls, J. (2005). Political Liberalism. New York: Columbia University Press.
- Wierzbicka, A. (1997). Understanding Cultures through Their Keywords: English,
Russian, Polish, German and Japanese. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
- Wierzbicka, A. (2006). English: Meaning and Culture. Oxford: Oxford University
Press.
21
Incommensurability and Moral Progress
Martijn Boot
Waseda University
m.boot@balliol.oxon.org
This paper concerns the question whether we can rationally and adequately
compare two different moral states and whether we can determine which state forms a
moral progress compared to the other. I will argue that due to the incommensurability
of heterogeneous moral values the ranking of different moral states can only be
incomplete. This means that some but not all moral conditions can be ordered according
to the level of morality or overall moral progress.
Morality is a multifaceted concept. Its multiple aspects are related to
heterogeneous human values. The central question is how the divergent moral elements
can be integrated and weighed in such a way that we are able to assesss whether one
moral state, which is better with respect to one element, forms a moral progress
compared to a different moral state, which is better with respect to another element. We
are often required to weigh the competing elements against each other in order to be
capable of answering this question. I will argue that, in particular cases,
incommensurability of competing ethical values or elements of morality may prevent a
determinate weighing. In those cases the answer to the question whether a particular
state of morality is superior to another is indeterminate.
These considerations support the idea of moral pluralism, which has to be
distinguished from moral relativism. Unlike the latter, the former believes in universally
valid moral principles but recognizes that these principles can be weighed and ranked
differently, without necessarily making one ranking morally better than another. This
approach promotes respect for divergent moral states in which universally valid moral
principles are ordered differently.
22
Why we cant do without moral mytho-poesis an almost-theistic
argument in favor of the possibility of moral progress
Govert Buijs
VU University
g.j.buijs@vu.nl
Imagine the following: in an infinite space there is just one flying object, a
meteorite. Would it be possible for any observer (which may well be we ourselves) to
determine whether this object is making progress? Can we ever know whether it is flying
forwards or backwards or sideways? We can only say so when we first choose another
point of reference.
In this paper I argue that the same holds mutatis mutandis for our moral universe.
However, there is no objective fixed point. For example, there are very interesting studies
indicating a decline of violence as an overall development, either in Western culture
(Norbert Elias) or in mankind at large (Steven Pinker). But whether this is to be considered
as progress or as regress, all depends on the point of reference that is applied: earlier
there was fear that the West would lose its heroic values and become effeminate.
How are moral points of reference identified? This question inevitably refers to mytho-
poetic activity, in which the moral nature of origins of our universe are identified.
Based on the work of (early) Ricoeur and others, it will be argued that there are a
number of different types of myths that all engender their own idea of moral progress
and regress. Both in ancient and modern times myths are constructed (myths of original
violence, of original peace, of a educational process of mankind, etc.)
However, the myths are not entirely random constructions. They refer to and
provide interpretations of basic human experiences.
In this paper it is argued that the must fully developed type of myths that can
serve as yardstick for moral progress and regress have the structure of a cosmic
command: let there be an earth together with let there be mankind and let them
be there together.
On the basis of this myth one can talk about moral progress in terms of a growth
of both ecological and humanitarian value (in close mutual connection).
However, can this myth be somehow true (what Plato would call an alethinos
logos) and not just another ethnocentric construction (cf. Rorty)? In this paper it will be
argued that there are reasons to consider this myth plausible, given certain (at this stage:
four) elements of our human moral experience: the conatus essendi, teleology, suffering
and language itself.
23
In this way an almost-theistic argument is developed in order to find a point of
reference that makes it possible to talk about moral progress in a meaningful way.
24
Progressing towards justice: the case of whistleblowing
Emanuela Ceva
University of Pavia
emanuela.ceva@unipv.it
25
Cultural moral progress despite biological moral decline? an empirical
and ethical investigation of the notion of moral progress
Eveline Gutzwiller
University of Luzern
eveline.gutzwiller@phlu.ch
Markus Christen
University of Zurich
Darcia Narvazez
University of Notre Dame
Moral progress may be a matter of time scale. If intuitive measures for moral
progress like the degree of physical violence within a society are taken as empirical
markers for moral progress, then most human societies have experienced moral progress
in the last few centuries (Pinker 2011). However, if the development of the human species
is taken as relevant time scale, there is theoretical and anthropological evidence that
humanity has experienced a global moral decline. Small-band hunter-gatherers (SBHG),
who represent a lifestyle presumed to largely account for 99% of human history, lived in
a strikingly cooperative social world in face of a difficult and sometimes unpredictable
physical world (Narvaez 2014). Human morality may be an advanced adaptation to
enable the uniquely derived lifestyle of human foragers, which requires generosity and
sharing due to extreme mutual interdependence for survival, thriving and dispersal (van
Schaik et al. 2013). Compared to a SBHG baseline, the current mode of human existence
involves considerable degree of organized violence and destructive behavior towards
non-humans, which is likely an expression of moral decline.
An immediate counter-argument to such a diagnosis of moral decline is the fact
that the living conditions of the modern world that emerged since sedentariness and the
beginning of agriculture (the neolithic revolution that happened about 12,000 years ago)
are completely different compared to those of SBHG. Culture and technology have led
to a rich differentiation of the social world as well as to an enormous increase of humans
that inhabit the earth (the number of humans that populated the world around 12000
B.C. is estimated with 2 Mio.; HYDE database). We therefore suggest that two notions of
moral progress should be distinguished: a biological notion that refers to the inherited
capacities that are typical of the evolutionary niche of mammals and that unfold in a
typical way in the human species (i.e., a strong impetus of generosity, sharing,
26
egalitarianism, and cooperation) as part of a community of humans and non-humans;
and a cultural notion that relates moral progress to dealing with an increasing diversity
of temptations and possible wrongdoings in a human social world whose complexity
accumulates in time. If such a differentiation makes sense, the question emerges, how
these two notions of moral progress interact.
In our contribution, we analyze this question from an empirical and a normative
perspective. First, we outline both the notions of biological and cultural moral progress
based on recent findings in neuroscience, anthropology and theoretical approaches that
provide game-theoretic models of cultural evolution. Second, we provide evidence
(based on data mainly of Western countries) that a tension between the biological and
cultural notion of moral progress has emerged that shows up in various cultural
practices, in particular in parenting. Third, we critically analyze the argument that the
claim of biological moral decline is inadequate given the cultural complexity of the
modern world. Fourth, we bring in the SBHG perspective that promotes a humbler,
sustainable human orientation to living with non-humans as a moral ideal. Finally, we
provide suggestions and justifications for re-aligning biological and cultural moral
progress.
References:
- HYDE database (History Database of the Global Environment): accessible at:
http://themasites.pbl.nl/tridion/en/themasites/hyde/index.html
- Narvaez D (2014): Neurobiology and the Development of Human Morality.
Evolution, Culture, and Wisdom. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc
- Pinker S (2011): Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined. New
York: Penguin Books.
- Van Schaik C (2013): Morality as a Biological Adaptation An Evolutionary Model
Based on the Lifestyle of Human Foragers. In: Christen M et al. (eds): Empirically
Informed Ethics (pp. 65-84). Berlin: Springer.
27
Is moral progress possible? a historical-philosophical perspective
A.M.R. de Dijn
University of Amsterdam
a.m.r.dedijn@uva.nl
Is moral progress possible? There seem to be good reasons to think so. When
surveying the history of moral reasoning, it is hard to escape the idea that we are at least
in some ways more moral than our ancestors, that we have learned to treat human beings
better in various instances. As Martha Nussbaum puts it, anyone who is a feminist has
to think that there is at least something to that view. And that is not just true for
feminists. The abolition of slavery, or, more recently, the radical sea-change in the
treatment of gays, all these examples suggest that moral progress is not just possible,
but that it has actually happened with a certain regularity in the not-too-distant past.
But that observation immediately raises questions: are these really genuine
examples of moral progress? Even more fundamentally, what is moral progress and how
should we distinguish it from mere changes in our moral outlook? In this paper, I will
argue that the best way to answer these questions is to draw inspiration from historians
and philosophers of science, who have long been engaged in a similar enquiry about the
possibility of scientific progress. More specifically, I will argue for a Kuhnian approach to
the problem of moral progress. Just like Thomas Kuhn has shown that it is possible to
think of progress within scientific reasoning, I aim to demonstrate that it is possible to
think of progress within moral reasoning.
My argument proceeds in three steps. First, I outline Kuhns conception of
scientific progress. In his seminal book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Kuhn
made clear that there is no cumulative progress in scientific reasoning, but that the way
in which science works can be better understood as a series of paradigm shifts,
paradigms being scientific models which aim to describe the world. While these
paradigms are noncommensurable, shifts between them happen because an
accumulation of facts leads to the breakdown of paradigms, thus making way for new
ones. In this sense, it is still possible to speak of scientific progress, since it is likely that
one paradigm will be replaced with another which provides a better fit with the known
facts about the world.
Next, I will argue that this model can also be applied in principle to moral
reasoning. Just like scientists use paradigms to understand the world, I argue, human
beings can be thought of as starting from certain moral paradigms to ground their
moral outlook. Moreover, these moral paradigms typically depend on factual information
28
about the world and human beings. Thus, the moral paradigm all human beings deserve
to be treated equally depends for its persuasiveness on the factual claim that all human
beings are equal. One might therefore speculate that, just like in the scientific world, the
accumulation of new information about the world will trigger changes in moral
reasoning, which will lead to new moral paradigms that provide a better fit with known
facts about the world.
I conclude by applying this Kuhnian approach to concrete historical examples of
changes in moral reasoning. More specifically, I will show that the Kuhnian approach
works well to explain how the 17th-century Cartesian Francois Poulain de la Barre became
to first thinker in history to advocate the full equality between men and women.
29
Refreshing a legal order: on the constructive role of tragic legal choices
30
A Working Definition of Moral Progress
Jeremy Evans
Boston College
evansjv@bc.edu
One of the central obstacles to the study of moral progress is a persistent lack of
consensus on a suitable definition of the relevant phenomenon. The stalemate appears
unlikely to abate given fundamental disagreements in the way various normative
traditions conceive the moral in moral progress. For example, those in the
consequentialist tradition will likely conceive of moral progress as a trajectory toward a
world characterized by a greater distribution of intrinsic goods, whereas the Kantian
tradition is more likely to characterize it as a trajectory toward a world where rational
agents more reliably discharge their duties via the appropriate set of intentions. In the
virtue ethics tradition, on the other hand, moral progress will instead describe a world
populated with better human characters. These conceptions of moral progress are
plainly in tension, since we can imagine a world with more intrinsic goods, but with worse
characters, or a world with more duties discharged, but a decline in goods distributed.
The aim of this essay is to propose a working definition of moral progress that can be
endorsed by a wide variety of normative traditions. Rather than offering an analysis of
moral progress, the goal is to identify a proxy property that reliably tracks, though is not
coextensive with the philosophically relevant property. Drawing on an emerging
empirical literature in social psychology, this paper proposes a working definition of
moral progress as a sufficiently enduring increase in the indicators of aggregate
subjective well-being (SWB) in a given population. I argue that this account should prove
acceptable to a wide variety of normative traditions in light of growing evidence that the
proxy property (SWB) is strongly correlated with the characteristics of moral progress
associated with the various ethical programs. It is now widely recognized that individuals
with high SWB have strong networks of authentic personal relationships, regularly
engage in meaningful pursuits that transcend self-interest, achieve in domains that
manifest personal strengths, are generally pro-social and altruistic, and have relatively
high levels of positive affect and correspondingly low levels of negative affect (Diener &
Seligman 2002). I argue that these characteristics are consistent with the indicators of
moral progression in the various normative traditions, in spite of a common
misconception about the role of well-being in Kantian ethics.
31
The Benefits of Population-level Thinking for Ethics
Mark Fedyk
Mount Allison University
mfedyk@mta.ca
33
What can we do? Empirical Philosophy
Annemie Halsema
VU University
j.m.halsema@vu.nl
34
Evolution and Moral Progress
Julia Hermann
Utrecht University
juliahermann@gmail.com
35
Moral Progress in Chinese Philosophy: Confucianism, Daoism and
Buddhism
Hyun Hchsmann
East China Normal University
hhochsmann@gmail.com
This is Confucius reply when he is asked, What does being moral consist in?
Confucianism, Daoism and Buddhism present distinct methodologies for
achieving moral progress. Confucian ethics advocates the study of classics and
expansion of love. The Great Learning affirms a continuum of endeavour towards moral
progress, beginning with the personal ethical relations in the family to social relations in
the community and culminating in harmony in the state and peace in the world.
Daoism presents a critical re-examination of the established authorities of learning and
conventional values. Setting aside the Confucian inculcation of the virtues of
benevolence and righteousness, Daoist ethics urges developing the inherent propensity
towards goodness. In advocating the life of spontaneity unconstrained by moral
injunctions to achieve autonomy and defending individual freedom against the
imposition of authority and tradition, Zhuangzi is unparalleled. Daoist ethics measures
moral progress as expansion of equality and freedom to the wide sphere of nature. Moral
36
progress consists in overcoming distinctions and in affirming the equality of things to
arrive at unity of all of life.
Buddhism teaches that enlightenment can be attained by transcending desire and
attachment to the self. Moral progress towards enlightenment is possible when we
recognise the four noble truths (life is suffering, suffering is caused by craving, suffering
can be eliminated by extinguishing craving and by following the eight noble paths). The
eight noble paths are: right view, speech, conduct, livelihood, effort, mindfulness, and
concentration.
37
The feet of man on the earth is but on a small space, but going on to where
he has not trod before, he traverses a great distance easily; so his
knowledge is but small, but going on to what he does not already know,
he comes to know what is meant by Heaven (Zhuangzi 24).
38
A Liberal Theory of Institutional Moral ProgressThe Rights-
Protection Theory
Hsin-wen Lee
City University of Hong Kong
hsinwlee@cityu.edu.hk
39
On the other hand, the rights-protection theory does not take into consideration
the moral desert of criminals. Instead, it considers the impacts of the abolishment on the
fundamental rights of individual citizens. If abolishment would preserve more basic
rights, for instance, if it would prevent the wrongful execution of innocent persons, then
we should abolish the death penalty. There may be other reasons why the society would
want to preserve itfor instance, to give criminals their just desert. This, however, is not
an important concern for the rights-protection theory. On the other hand, if, after careful
evaluation, we find that abolishing the death penalty would result in the violation of
more rights to life, say, for instance, if the society is such that the death penalty is the
only effective method to deter potential killers and thereby protecting more rights to
life, then this theory would recommend that capital punishment be preserved. An
implication of this theory is that political institutions that tend to preserve liberties are
considered better, even when they might fail in other aspects.
After explaining the theory and spelling out its implication, I consider objections
raised by desert-based theories and try to respond to them. Desert-based theorists
typically worry that liberal theories are too abstract and focus wrongly on formal rights,
not substantive well-being. I show that the rights-protection is the best way any secular
institution can adopt to protect individual well-being.
40
The Snafu that is Progress
Abigail Klassen
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
abigail.klassen@gmail.com
Social constructionism (herein SC) is the thesis that some categories and kinds,
including personhood, self, ill, and so on, are socially rather than naturally
constituted. In its emancipatory form, SC attempts to show that some categories and
kinds are socially founded or contingent and can therefore be amended or even
discarded. Within analytic philosophy, there has been some work done delineating kinds
of SC projects. A large body of research has been devoted to the analysis and critique of
particular kinds, especially gender and race. Far less work done examining the plausibility
of SCs ameliorative or emancipatory programs. Unlike descriptive SC projects,
ameliorative versions shift the question from what X (some category or kind) is to what
we want X to be. My paper attempts to provide a critical response to the new
ameliorative SC movement.
A worry about relativism in ameliorative programs goes thus: as parties declare
their redefinition of some X to be the most just and so forth, there may exist no standard
by which to judge the better from the worse other than by each partys own lights. If
relativism in ameliorative projects is unavoidable, I ask whether it must be pernicious
(solipsistic and aporetic). The question of the possibility of non-pernicious relativism is
particularly apt in light of recent and renewed philosophical interest in the possibility of
emancipatory relativisms (cf., Alcoff (2005), Code (1995), and Longino (2003)). Positive
relativism attempts to proffer a constructive rather than a negative and immobilizing
program. I ask whether pernicious relativism is avoidable and also whether it is possible
once the usual and descriptively and normatively bankrupt binaries of self/other,
intrinsic/extrinsic, and so on are problematized by SC itself. Then, I ask how and if non-
pernicious relativism can lend itself to emancipatory projects.
Relational or social properties need not be seen as external, accidental
characteristic[s] overlaying... (allegedly) internal, essential... core of ourselves (Sullivan
2000, 26). Relational properties need not be construed as simply and only negative, but
also as the means by which I take up and engage my world... [and] not merely obstacles
to that process (29). If kind-membership and identity are essentially relational -
essentially social then the claim that some category or kind is socially constructed loses
bite. On the other hand, SC ameliorative projects become all the more relevant, asking:
How can we collectively (socially) improve some X? But how can problems that haunt
41
descriptive projects, namely disagreement within and between specialists, the folk, and
between communities about who does or does not count as an X, what an X is, and so
on avoid being re-routed to ameliorative projects? To settle the question of what some
category or kind X is or should be, SC cannot appeal to correspondence with the world
and nor can it appeal to truth, progress, ethics, or rationality either since its own tenets
might problematize those very notions.
I thus ask the following: (i) whether SC projects ever demonstrate that X is socially
constructed or if they merely presuppose to do so by presupposing that X is not
inevitable, (ii) with parties each declaring their redefinition of X to be the better, whether
SC emancipatory projects will simply collapse into relativism, and (iii) if there exists no
standard of what X is or what X should be other than what has most currency or what
most people believe should have the most currency, whether SC projects can actually
work to reinforce the status quo. The second objection suggests that SC may be self-
undermining. The third objection argues that if SC is taken to be the correct
metaphysics of the social world, then pernicious relativism is impossible. The third
objection can be fleshed out thus: ethno/cultural-centrism characterizes our everyday
situation, but our everyday situation is, in effect, exactly what SC (especially in its
ameliorative capacity) sets out to disrupt. SC thus seems to bring us full circle. If kind-
membership just is essentially relational and if renegotiating identities and kinds always
already takes place just as positive relativism characterizes the process, then SC
ameliorative projects do not have a substantive, prescriptive, or normative account to
offer: they are descriptive, elucidating a process that is always already in full force. Thus,
although ameliorative projects claim to proffer a substantive and critical program, I claim
they merely articulate an analysis of the status quo.
Bibliography:
- Alcoff, L.M. (2005) Visible Identities: Race, Gender, and the Self. Oxford University
Press, New York.
- Butler, J. (1993). Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex. New York:
Routledge.
- Sullivan, S. (2000) Reconfiguring Gender with John Dewey: Habits, Bodies, and
Cultural Change. Hypatia. 15(1): 23-42.
42
Moral Progress without Moral Realism
Charlie Kurth
Washington University
ckurth@wustl.edu
13
C. Kurth, What Do Our Critical Practices Say about the Nature of Morality? Philosophical Studies 166
(2013): 45-64.
43
explanations of fashion phenomena necessarily involve appeal to actual beliefs about
whats fashionable. This picture corresponds with our intuition that fashion facts are
mind-dependent and, thus, that progress in fashion amounts to having beliefs that
better track existing conventions.
Moral discourse lies between these two extremes: moral error across time and
culture is possible, but deep error is not; moral explanations are neither belief-
independent nor reliant on claims about peoples actual beliefs and conventions (e.g.,
idealized beliefs can also contribute to moral explanations). Thus, moral progress is
neither change toward a mind-independent moral reality, nor change that better
conforms to existing moral consensus. Rather, it is change that while transcending the
existing moral beliefs, accords with some idealized or vetted set of moral beliefse.g.,
those that survive cognitive psychotherapy (Brandt 1979) or those found at the end of
inquiry (Kitcher 2011).
44
moral anxiety14. Moral anxiety, in brief, is the distinctive unease that we feel in the
face of a difficult moral decision: we want to make the correct choice, but were uncertain
what that is. Because moral anxiety is driven not by a concern for peer acceptance, but
rather a concern to make the correct decision, it can prompt genuine moral innovation
innovation that moves us beyond existing moral beliefs and conventions.
14 C. Kurth, Moral Anxiety and Moral Agency. in Oxford Studies in Normative Ethics, M. Timmons (ed).
Oxford: Oxford University Press, forthco
45
Can we improve our emotional apprehension of moral values?
Samuel Lepine
University of Lyon
samuel.lepine@gmail.com
The idea that emotions are linked in a very particular way to moral values is now
a widely shared idea among philosophers (Mulligan 2010; Tappolet 2011; Roberts
2013), and it seems to be a promising way to explain the possibility of moral progress.
More specifically, it seems plausible to admit that our emotions could lead us to
perceive the value of some actions or situations, independently of our beliefs or even
our judgments (Dring, 2010). According to this line of thought, we can discover
emotionally - so to say the existence of moral values (Roeser, 2011). Thence, it
could be possible to give an account of moral progress in terms of emotional
education: to make moral progress would amount to be able to perceive emotionally
certain values which we were not aware of in the past.
But this view raises many issues. During my presentation, I will focus on two
specific problems. First, this view assumes that moral progress is a true possibility and
thence, that there exists moral facts, of which we could become aware. But, if there are
indeed many accounts of this idea, it does not seem to be the case that there is a strong
consensus on what are really those moral facts, and thence, on what we should have in
mind when we talk about moral progress (Joyce, 2001). And it seems at least equally
plausible to admit that moral codes, systems and values, are incommensurable (Prinz,
2007). This is what I will call the problem of moral relativism. Secondly, this view about
moral progress lends to emotions some properties which need to be examined
carefully. While it is true that we can empathize with the frailty of a stranger,
independently of our beliefs about that person, it remains important to note that our
emotions are generally linked to our concerns, sentiments, and motivations (like
desires), and most of the time to our beliefs as well. I feel indignant about an action
because I believe that it violates a norm of equity. I am ashamed of my behavior
because I desire not to behave that way. To say it in a more specific way, our emotions
track values which are relevant to our concerns (Roberts, 2003). If it so, then the idea
that we can really discover moral values, through are emotional experiences, must be
flawed in some sense. This is what I will call the problem of emotional motivation.
Having exposed these two issues, I will try to show that there remains a lively
possibility to give an account of moral progress which is able to handle those
constraints. I will argue that moral progress can be only a local progress, that is a
46
progress which takes place inside a given moral culture, and not a global and
transcultural progress. Moral progress, here, amounts to favor and make up rules which
are consistent with our values, concerns, and motivations. I will suggest that this view
has many advantages. The more important one is that it can make sense of the
strongest skeptical critics which have been addressed to the idea of moral progress
recently (e.g. Nichols 2004). But it also allows us to bypass the problem of relativism
and the problem of emotional motivation, since it seems plausible to assume that there
are certain common motivations and concerns, which most of the human beings share.
If it is so, I will argue, then we have good reasons to think that emotional education
amounts mostly to become aware of those concerns which are supposed to drive our
emotional apprehensions of values.
47
Supervenient Moral Causation: How Moral Facts Cause Moral
Progress
Andres Luco
Nanyang Technology University
acluco@gmail.com
This essay argues that moral progress is a type of social change that can be
caused by mind-independent moral properties. Moral properties include the properties
of justice, injustice, equality, autonomy, and oppression. Moral properties are mind-
independent in the sense that they exist independently of the mental representations
of any particular moral appraiser.
I defend the thesis that moral properties supervene on constellations of non-
moral properties. To say that moral properties supervene on non-moral properties
means that any change or difference in moral properties requires a change or
difference in a supervenience-base of non-moral properties.
Although moral properties supervene on the non-moral, they are not causally
impotent. Rather, moral properties sometimes cause moral progress. As Keith Sawyer
has argued, causal laws describe causal dependencies between types of events (Sawyer
2002). Moral properties, I contend, figure into causal laws that produce the socio-
historical changes associated with moral progress. This is because moral properties are
event-types that are realized by intersubjective relationships of various kindsi.e.,
interactions, norms, practices, and institutions.
Moral properties depend for their existence upon the non-moral properties of
intersubjective relationships. However, causal laws that cite moral properties do
describe causal dependencies between event-types that could not be identified purely
at the level of non-moral properties (cf. Railton 1998). Event-types that are the effects
of moral properties include such developments as the abolition of slavery, universal
suffrage, the rise of gender equality, and the rights revolutions of the late 20th century
up to the present.
This essay presents a detailed account of moral properties and their causal
efficacy. The moral properties are characterized as selection pressures that cause
certain intersubjective relationships to be more resilient than others. Moreover, moral
properties supervene upon properties of intersubjective relationships that permit all
individuals to pursue their interests without impediment, that constrain the actions of
all in consideration of the interests of each, and that impose similar constraints with
respect to the similar interests of every person.
48
To cite one classic example of the causal powers of moral properties, the
injustice of slavery is a cause of the abolition of slavery. The injustice of slavery is a
moral property realized by the systematic failure of master-slave relationships to
accord equal consideration to the interests of slaves and non-slaves. I discuss the
abolition of the British slave trade, and argue that large swaths of the British public
came to adopt anti-slavery attitudes because they recognized the fact that slavery is
not an impartial institution, and is therefore unjust. British abolitionists managed to
persuade the larger public that slavery was an evil. Their leading tactic was to
underscore the brutalities wrought by the slave tradethe kidnappings, the
disintegration of families, the death and disease on slave ships, etc. Abolitionists had
success in turning public opinion against the slave trade by drawing peoples attention
to the grievous ways in which slaves fundamental interests were discounted by this
institution. Hence, moral opposition to the slave trade was a recognition of or response
to the devastating effects that the trade had on fundamental slave interests.
A salient objection to the causal process just outlined is that moral properties
do not cause moral progress. Rather, moral beliefs do. So, for example, it was changing
beliefs about the injustice of slavery that precipitated abolition, not the injustice of
slavery itself (Leiter 2001). My reply to this objection is that moral properties such as
injustice can cause morally progressive social changes, and they can do so
independently of affecting peoples moral beliefs. As Joshua Cohen (1997) argues, the
injustice of slavery made the institution less resilient. Compared with non-slave
institutions, slave-holding institutions have greater difficulty maintaining peoples
voluntary compliance with their norms. During the American Civil War, slavery put the
Confederacy at a competitive disadvantage to the Union. President Lincolns decision
to issue the Emancipation Proclamation gave the Union a military edge. Freed slaves
were eager to contribute to the Unions military efforts, and indeed, of the 180,000
African Americans who served in Union forces, close to half came from the Southern
states. Even more took army jobs as civilian employeesfortification builders,
draymen, pilots, nurses, cooks, etc. The South, on the other hand, excluded slaves from
the ranks of the Confederate army until the war was all but lost. Regardless of the
extent to which slavery was believed to be unjust, the fact that slavery was so damaging
the fundamental interests of slaves created a crisis of allegiance for the slaveholding
South.
49
Can There Be Moral Progress Without Moral Realism?
Michael Lyons
University of Bristol
ml9427.2009@my.bristol.ac.uk
On the matter of moral progress, moral realists have been treated as having the
upper hand over moral anti-realists. Moral realists can explain moral progress in terms
of the moral beliefs of the agents progressing to a fuller understanding of a moral
reality, and the subsequent improving their moral behaviour. Moral anti-realists on the
other hand seem to have a conceptual difficulty when trying to explain how there can
be moral progress. If moral truths are in any sense relative or at least dependent upon
the perspectives of moral agents, then since there is no independent moral reality to
gain a better understanding of, its not clear how moral progress can take place on an
objective basis, since any claims of improvement of moral beliefs or behaviours can
only be based on, and hence be valid in virtue of, other moral beliefs or behaviours.
In response to this conceptual difficulty, the moral anti-realist has three options:
either she can reject the existence of any genuine moral progress, she can provide an
account of objective moral progress on the moral realist terms, or she can provide an
anti-realist framework within which she can then explain moral progress. In her paper,
Moral Progress Without Moral Realism, Catherine Wilson (2010) defends the third
option; not only does she claim that moral anti-realists can provide an adequate
account of both moral truth and moral progress, but also that the account provided is
preferable to those available to the moral realist. In doing so she argues that in fact it
is the moral anti-realist who has the upper hand over realists on the matter of moral
progress.
First of all, she defends the treatment of moral claims as theoretical conjectures
that face the tribunal of reason and experience and that may be accepted or rejected
accordingly. (Wilson (2010), p. 98) She then defends an analogy between moral beliefs
and scientific beliefs, in order to explain moral truth as a postulated endpoint of the
theoretical development of collective morals. Wilson then in turn explains moral
progress in terms of the generating and dissipating of collective narratives that can
ratify a change in collective moral beliefs as being a progression or deterioration. So
moral truths are simply moral claims that will survive scrutiny, and moral progress is
the change in moral beliefs that is regarded upon the scrutiny of collective theoretical
narratives to be valid and irreversible.
50
Wilson (2010, pp. 110-112) then provides the following reasons for why this account of
moral truth and progress is preferable to the one that a moral realist can provide:
1. Moral realists are committed to moral truths as being independent of any
perspective (hypothetical or otherwise), when in fact Wilson (2010, p. 111) claims
that they depend on the existence of beings that as a result of both their own
capacities and their environment are capable of interaction that can lead to
moral harm and/or injury. For on her account, there would otherwise be no
moral conjectures to ratify, and hence no moral truths.
2. Moral realists are committed to the claim that there are moral truths that can
never be known, due to the epistemic limitations of agents, when in fact Wilson
(Ibid.) claims that since moral truths are ratified conjectures, there are no moral
truths that will never be known. Once a moral conjecture is ratified, then it can
be claimed that it was always true, even before ratification. It can even be
claimed that it would have been true even if it were never ratified.
Moreover, Wilson (Ibid.) claims that the commitment moral realists have to
inaccessible moral truths are also arbitrary, since according to her there are no
limitations to moral knowledge of the kind that might by analogy make a kind
of complete scientific knowledge impossible.
3. Moral realists are committed to the claim that in every moral dispute, at least
one participant must hold a false moral belief, whilst Wilson (2010, p. 112) claims
that actually this is not the case, and her account can accommodate her claim:
if neither of the disputed moral beliefs is ever ratified, then none of them will
ever be elevated to the status of moral truths.
In this paper, I will: 1) argue that Wilsons account of moral progress can be
accommodated within a moral realist framework, 2) attempt to repudiate these three
reasons, and 3) subsequently point out why her account of moral truth is problematic.
Reference
- Wilson, C. (2010) Moral Progress Without Moral Realism, in Philosophical
Papers, 39:1, 97-116.
51
Wellbeing and time: Are we happier than we were ten thousand years
ago?
Jason Marsh
St. Olaf College
marshj@stolaf.edu
Debates about whether there is moral progress, all things considered, can seem
almost intractable. But wellbeing is a crucial part of ethics and in light of recent
empirical work on human flourishing, exploring whether there is progress in this
domain may be more measurable. Unlike Derek Parfit, who asks at the end of On What
Matters (Vol 2) whether human history has been worth it, I will be asking about our
progress to date. The two questions I have in mind are as follows: (1) are we becoming
happier over the centuries? (2) Are people lives are getting objectively better, all things
considered, over the centuries?
I explore both questions. Drawing on recent work in the science of happiness, I
first explore some prima facie empirical threats to the idea that we are becoming
happier. (These threats include the Easterlin Paradox, the hedonic treadmill, and the
problem of affective forecasting). I then argue these threats, while they do raise a
serious question about whether we are becoming happier, in the sense of emotional
happiness, do not clearly challenge the idea that our objective wellbeing is improving.
Whats more, I give some reason for thinking that our wellbeing may in fact be
improving, given an objective list conception of wellbeing, even while acknowledging
how complex the question. If my thesis is correct, and our wellbeing is increasing at a
higher rate than our happiness, this gives us further reason to fund research aimed at
improving human happiness and overcoming the hedonic treadmill.
52
Improving Moral Craftmanship by Moral Case Deliberation
Empirical ethicists are often criticized with regard to the status they attribute to
the moral knowledge of practitioners as opposed to that of theorists: the validity of
priviliging the moral expertise of just any practitioner over that of the ethicist is
doubted. In our paper, we present a response to this criticism. In doing so, we will take
Albert Musschengas article Empirical ethics and the special place of the practitioners
moral judgements,15 in which he articulates the aforementioned doubt, as our point of
departure.
Underlying Musschengas argument is the assumption that in empirical ethics,
the ethicist is a detached observer of professionals in their practical context when
studying their moral attitudes, judgements and behavior. We will argue that this is not
necessarily the case: if empirical ethics is approached as an hermeneutic, dialogical
endeavor, ethicist and professional are both immersed in an interactive process of
deliberation. Although qua content, the outcomes of these deliberations primarily rest
on the moral judgements of the professionals, it is the ethicist that guides them in
establishing these judgements by facilitating the reflection. This guidance does not
only have a strong normative dimension, it also fosters moral learning of practitioners.
This, then, does not mean that the empirical ethicist should select good professionals
with moral expertise, such as Musschenga suggests, but rather, it means that (s)he
should engage together with professionals in activities of moral learning.
In this sense, the ethicist is not merely assessing moral intuitions, attitudes and
judgments, he is involved in the process in which they are made explicit, analysed and
transformed, a process in which practitioners can increase their moral expertise. This is
actually in line with what Musschenga believes the role of the ethicist should be in
providing ethics support. As a concrete example of ethics support that takes increasing
moral expertise as its major objectives, we will discuss Moral Case Deliberation (MCD).
MCD offers a platform for an ongoing learning process which improves normative
professionalism, or moral craftmanship: the commitment to do the moral part of a job
well by criticizing, reflecting upon, understanding and deliberating on the moral
15
Empirical ethics and the special place of the practitioners moral judgements. In: Veerle Draulans et
al;. (ed.) Ethics and Empirics. Strange and Fragile Bedfellows. Special issue of Ethical Perspectives
17(2010), no 2, pp. 231-258.
53
aspects of the job (Parker 2012). We will relate this characteristic of MCD to a prominent
concept in Gadamers work Truth and Method is cultivation, or Bildung.16 The essence
of Bildung, Gadamer holds, is a return to oneself that requires a transformation.
Correspondingly, a successful dialogue establishes the transformation of the
interlocutors involved, because to reach an understanding with ones partner in a
dialogue is not merely a matter of total self-expression and the successful assertion of
ones own point of view, but a transformation into a communion, in which we do not
remain what we were (Gadamer 2004 p. 341).
Subsequently, we will seek to demonstrate the way in which the (empirical)
ethicist can proceed from the moral attitudes, judgements and behavior of
practitioners, yet at the same time be actively involved in dialogues on moral issues,
through which practitioners can become better professionals. To illustrate our point,
we will describe an empirical ethical research project in which we collected data from
a large series of MCDs held at a care institution, which we also facilitated.
16
Gadamer, Truth and Method, 1992, p. 10.
54
Moral Progress and the Divine Command Theory: Can the Good
become Better?
Annette Mosher
VU University
a.k.mosher@vu.nl
When considering the Divine Command Theory and moral progress, one has to
ask if moral progress is possible. Can the Good become better, or is moral progress
simply humans complying with the will of God more perfectly? Particularly in religions
with authoritative, canonized scriptures this appears to be the only answer since
scripture (at least in the Judeo-Christian and Islamic traditions) is usually leading in
discussions about morality.
However, what occurs when the Divine revokes and changes his/her will and
therefore the command? Is this even possible? And if so, does this make the Good
able to morally progress? Or are there other issues surrounding changes to the Divine
Command?
In this paper I plan to unpack these questions using the current hot topic of
homosexuality. This is a particular problem between the European member states
such as Hungary and Romaniawith their large Orthodox citizenship which sees
homosexuality and teaching homosexuality as a violation of religious ethicsand
states such as the Netherlands, Germany, and Belgiumwhich normally see
homosexuality as a human rights issue rather than a religious issue.
In particular I plan to discuss the role of authoritative scripture for those
opposed to homosexuality. In contrast, most countries using the human rights model
miss the fact that their arguments do not reach the religious communities with strong
opposition to homosexuality because they do not address the scriptural context and
remain with humanistic philosophical arguments. This dichotomy in approach means
that the two talk alongside each other with Orthodoxy dismissing philosophical
arguments as worldly and anti-religious.
To do this I will look at the current situation and ethical rhetoric around
homosexuality from an Abrahamic perspective. I will follow this with an exegesis of
Genesis 8 and 9, showing that at least once the Divine has changed his/her mind about
commands and that there has, in fact, been Divine moral progress during human
history. Using these findings I will argue application for current ethical situations and
propose a scriptural perspective that adds to the historic human rights argument.
Added to this will be the historically accepted theological and philosophically accepted
55
arguments of scripture, tradition, experience, and reason with the hopes that the deep
divide can be bridged and further progress can be made in discussing sensitive topics.
56
Levels of Moral Enhancement
Norbert Paulo
University of Salzburg
norbert.paulo@sbg.ac.at
57
I exemplify the relevance of the distinction between the various levels with a
brief discussion of some implications of MBE on the policy level that have been
neglected so far. Most views in the liberal tradition of political philosophy rely heavily
on the individual, its participation, its decisions, its interests, its views. They not only
emphasize respect for persons, they are built on it. I focus on one representative debate
within the liberal tradition, namely on the debate between political liberalism and
perfectionist liberalism and examine if and how different forms of MBE would be
compatible with one or the other liberalism. I argue that only perfectionist versions of
liberalism are compatible with the imposition of MBE, although even the perfectionist
liberalism rests on a very strong notion of individual autonomy that might be
undermined by some forms of MBE. The flip side of this is that, due to the grounding
notion of respect for persons, proponents of political liberalism will have an easier time
justifying the individual use of MBE, even if imposed (for example on criminal
offenders).
I conclude that, once the levels of MBE are better understood and discussed
separately, the currently harsh opposition between proponents and critics of MBE will
disappear.
58
The concept of moral progress : a Kantian outlook
Elena Parthene
Sorbonne University
elena.partene@gmail.com
59
We should also note that if Kant is such an important reference here, it is also
because he warns us against two symmetrical pitfalls when analyzing moral
development : what he calls in The Contest of the Faculties moral terrorism on the one
hand and eudemonism on the other. Indeed, the conviction that everything goes from
bad to worse is shared by several leaders who, on the pretext of this alleged decadence,
impose their protection and thus satisfy their appetite of domination. On the
contrary, believing that everything is getting better reflects an eudemonist conception
claiming that happiness is the criterion of a moral upgrading, which is equally difficult
to endorse.
Finally, I cannot elude the central question underlying all these concerns, that is,
what would be the empirical proof of this moral progress of humanity ? While technical
progress finds confirmation in inventing technologies always more innovating, while
intellectual progress can be testified by figures like a decreasing illiteracy rate, how can
we establish the very existence of a moral progress? What criterion should we use to
measure it? According to Kant, it is not possible to answer this question with facts or
figures, it can only be answered using a sign. Moral progress does not come forward
explicitly, nor does it show itself directly, through images : as a sign, it always expresses
itself indirectly and requires interpretation. Looking for moral progress is looking for
little signs, not for positive facts: it belongs to hermeneutics, not descriptive history.
And Kant gives us a very precise example of such a sign, a defining event in the first
conceptualization of moral progress: the French Revolution.
60
Moral Progress and the Reliability of Moral Intuitions
Johnnie Pedersen
Roskilde University
jrrpedersen@gmail.com
In this paper Im going to propose an argument for the claim that the fact that
S intuits that p is (under favorable circumstances) evidence of what the moral facts are
(assuming that there are such facts). I call this argument the argument from progress.
This argument is premised on the assumption that moral progress is relevant to the
evidential status of moral intuitions. The argument from progress can be summarized
as follows:
1. There has been moral progress.
2. If there has been moral progress, then there has been progress among ethicists.
3. Progress among ethicists is achieved through reflective equilibrium.
4. Moral intuitions are used in the deployment of reflective equilibrium.
5. Theoretical progress is more likely to occur if the beliefs that are used in the
deployment of a method are evidence of the facts.
6. Therefore, the best explanation of progress among ethicists is (in part) that
intuitions are evidential.
7. Therefore, intuitions are evidential.
There are those who deny premise (1), that there has been moral progress. In
order to defend this claim, I will have to commit myself to what would count as
evidence for moral progress since otherwise it wouldnt be clear what to look for in
setting out to defend the claim. Thus, Im going to take it to be evidence for moral
progress if the world is more peaceful and if there is less injustice today than earlier.
This builds on the auxiliary claim that peoples moral beliefs are manifested in their
conduct and in the structure of their societies (laws, institutions, etc.). If there wasnt
this kind of connection between moral belief and behavior, then there may well be
practical moral progress (progress in behavior), without a corresponding theoretical
moral progress (progress in the sense of beliefs and knowledge). But I regard it as
plausible that practical progress corresponds with theoretical progress since people
tend to be motivated to act on their moral beliefs. Thus, I provide evidence that,
according to my criteria, there has indeed been practical progress.
Premise (2) holds that if there has been this sort of decrease in violence and
injustice and, accordingly, an increased likelihood that peoples moral beliefs represent
the moral facts, then there has also been an increased likelihood that the moral beliefs
61
of ethicists do so. The argument from progress holds that this increased insight into
the moral facts on the part of ethicists is best explained by the claim that intuitions are
evidential. For I am assuming that ethicists, in part, arrive at their moral beliefs by using
intuitions through a deployment of the method of reflective equilibrium (premises (3)
and (4)). Since, as I argue, any progress is more likely to occur if the beliefs one starts
from in deploying the methodology are evidence of what the facts are (premise (5)),
the best explanation of the fact that there has been progress is that the moral beliefs
of ethicists, including their intuitions, are evidential.
62
Hume's 'General Sense of Common Interest' and Conditions for Moral
Progress
Bjrn Petersson
University of Lund
bjorn.petersson@fil.lu.se
63
Scientific Progress as Moral Progress
Simone Pollo
Sapienza Universit di Roma
simone.pollo@uniroma1.it
The relation between facts and values is a controversial and highly debated topic
in metaethics. Most of such debates are focused either on the plausibility of some kind
of metaphysical identity between facts and values or on the possibility of a logical
deduction of the latter from the former. Nonetheless other kinds of relation between
facts and values are conceivable. In my paper I will argue in favor of the idea that facts
- that is descriptions of reality - are deeply linked with the normative sphere (broadly
conceived) since they constitute the factual framework in which moral life takes place.
Even if not identical with facts (or deduced from them) moral norms, values and feelings
are profoundly shaped by descriptions of the world. More precisely, ordinary
experience testifies that moral reflexivity aims at being tuned with the factual
framework to gain precision and objectivity of moral statements, feelings and
responses. From this view about the role of facts in moral life I will claim that scientific
understanding of the world should have a central role in building the factual framework
of moral experience. Although the factual framework ought to be conceived in a
pluralistic way (that is built upon different sources of knowledge), science should have
a privileged role in it. Therefore, I will support the idea that progress in the scientific
understanding of the world can lead to moral progress both in personal life and in
social institutions. To support my claim I will show how the Darwinian account of life
can interact with morality in shaping our understanding of human nature, of the human
place in the world and of the purpose (or absence of purpose) of human life.
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Progress through Reason?
Liberalisms Contributions to the Idea of Moral Progress
Dr Vanessa Rampton
Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zurich)
vanessa.rampton@gmail.com
Today the idea of overall moral progress, with its roots in Enlightenment
optimism and respect for reason, is highly contested within academic circles. Partly
because of liberalisms historical commitment to universalism and progressive
thinking, the belief in moral progress has been portrayed as the prime fallacy of that
tradition in particular, associated with unrealistic expectations about human beings
becoming more rational through time.
The question becomes more complicated, however, once we take into account
the varied nature of the liberal philosophical and political tradition. While some liberal
politicians pay lip service to the idea of moral progress, and seek to position the
successes of contemporary liberal democracies within an overarching narrative of
progress, liberal theory provides a multitude of answers to the question of how and
whether moral progress might occur.
This paper seeks to shed additional light on the relationship between liberalism
and progress by focusing on several examples within the liberal tradition that nuance
the claim that it can be associated with a single view of moral progress. The liberal
tradition, I hope to show, has in fact been the arena of a genuine debate between those
who follow some version of Immanuel Kants view that humans beings are undergoing
a civilizing process and becoming less violent, less cruel, and more peaceful, and
others who argue that our incipient potential for violence and brutality is increasing
alongside developments in science and technology. A number of strands of liberalism,
I argue, have the philosophical resources that allow them to identify the gains of moral
progress in some domains with costs in others. In turn, this is the source of both
important strengths and deep tensions within the liberal tradition itself.
65
The moral progress of an individual
Amber Riaz
Lahore University of Management Sciences
amber.riaz@oriel.oxon.org
This paper looks at the idea of the moral progress of an individual. In particular,
it looks at the progress of an individual as a judger of particular, contingent moral
propositions. On the current proposal, a persons moral judgement develops over time,
and as a result a greater proportion of her or his judgements will turn out to be correct.
So the measure of whether an individual has made progress as a moral judge is
something we measure by ascertaining her moral success. But how do we measure
moral success? In the recent literature on moral testimony, the idea of moral expertise
has come under serious attack on the grounds that even if there are moral experts,
there is no way to identify them since their success cant be measured. These critiques
compare moral expertise to the expertise of a weatherman: to verify whether someone
is really a weather expert, there is concrete feedback from the environment that we
may rely on to determine how successful a weatherman has been at making correct
judgements about the weather; but we have nothing analogous to rely on with respect
to moral expertise. The current paper rejects this criticism of moral success and explores
the kinds of feedback that we do in fact use in at least some parts of the world to assess
the moral success of an individuals. Such feedback includes, though is not limited to,
the relief of anxiety and stress, certain desirable changes in behaviour, and so on
resulting from following the moral advice of the putative expert. The suggestion is that
the best explanation of these changes is that the relevant moral advice/judgement was
true. An individual shows moral progress if there is an increase in the proportion of
her true to false moral judgements so assessed. In the end, the paper explores how
some of these ideas may be used to assess the moral progress of a society or
community.
66
Dynamism in Legality: The Significance of Human Dignity in
International Law
Stephen Riley
Utrecht University
s.p.riley@uu.nl
67
Moral Progress: enhancing justice?
Alexander Rosas
Universidad Nacional de Colombia
arosasl@unal.edu.co
Correspondingly, we feel that violations of justice are more serious, and that
preventing them is more urgent, than violations of beneficence. This psychological
difference is externalized in a difference in our legal practices. Humanity everywhere
feels entitled to use violence to prevent or punish violations of justice, to enforce justice
by means of legal sanctions. In contrast, we do not feel entitled to legally enforce
beneficence, or punish violations against it. We feel that this is congruent with the fact
that the latter do not positively hurt anybody, as the former do.
Smith speculates that we are so designed because the two types of violations
have very different consequences: Society could exist without beneficence, but not
without justice. So, Smith argues, the psychologically felt, imperative force behind
justice seems to have been given to us by Nature, in order to buttress a stable society,
indispensable for human survival and flourishing. It is evidence for Smiths view that
wars the breakdown of stable social relationships are usually triggered by the
generalized feeling that duties of justice, not of beneficence, have been violated. This
view seems correct, even if we allow for some measure of cultural relativity regarding
what counts as a violation of justice.
68
Cultural relativity is not the problem I want to address. Rather, it is the tension
between the stronger moral force that Nature has placed behind justice and the fact
that we view progress regarding justice as needed and urgent. For, if Nature has put
more force behind the duties of justice, why cant this force guarantee an acceptable
level of compliance?
One explanation is that Nature has put more force behind justice, but not
nearly enough. In a sentimentalist view, this force comes ultimately from Sympathy.
Sympathy internally enforces moral behavior in a battle with selfishness, which is also
a natural force. Moral progress depends ultimately on this battle. Moral progress can
also come from new moral insights based on the discovery of new factual truths about
how our actions can help or more importantly avoid harming others. But this source
of progress is not nearly as momentous as the obstacle that results from the moral
distortions originating in self-deceit, the process by which the selfish passions manage
to paint our immoral actions as if they were congruent with justice (Smith TMS, Pt. III,
Chap. IV). Self-deceit arises when the strength of the selfish passions suppresses the
impartial perspective motivated by Sympathy.
Injustice persists, therefore, because of a weakness in Sympathy. Sympathy
moves us not to harm more than it moves us to help, but it often yields under the
promptings of selfishness. This picture might well be a realistic view of our natural
design. Is this weakness equally distributed in the human population? Current research
into the proximate and ultimate (evolutionary) causes of moral behavior suggests that
there is considerable genetic variation at the population level regarding the strength
of the emotions behind moral behavior. And a few immoral people can suffice to cause
considerable moral distress. One of the consequences of taking this variation seriously
is that moral progress cannot be achieved solely with educational programs. Instead,
we should seriously explore the possibility of enhancing the biological capacities
underlying morality.
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Two premisses for assessing moral progress
C. A. Santander
University of Valencia
carmen.santander@uv.es
When we are studying History, the fact that we consider a concrete connection
of past events as progressive or regressive depends on the theory we are using to read
those events and on what we consider to be the goals of humanity.
Trivially, if we have a change between two different states, the change is
progressive if the result is better than the previous state. We need a criterion to judge
whether the result is better than the previous state, having into account that depending
of the nature of the change the important aspects involved can vary. In this paper we
will deal with the changes related to the inclusion of an excluded group in the
community of moral consideration. The concrete characteristics of each inclusion are
slightly different depending on the group we are including (black people, women,
animals, etc.), and we will need more values involved in assessing the change for some
of these groups, and less for others, depending on their situation. But there is a
common core in all these changes: first, we need the premise causing non consensual
harm to others is bad, even when depending on the case harm will be understood
in different ways, and second, we need to assess the changes from an impartial point
of view, because our interests can distort our judgements. The point of view of the
impartial spectator will not be a dispassionate one, but a point of view without personal
interests of any kind. Of course, these two premises are related to the goal of reducing
the suffering (which is considered bad). There is a biological reason to consider
suffering bad.
Assuming these two premisses, it is easy to see what changes are progressive:
those which produce less non consensual harm, all things considered, will be
progressive. Of course, the problem is to understand what is the meaning of them. Our
aim in this paper is to clarify and to defend those two premises.
Regarding the first one, we will try to defend a consequentialist way of deciding
what is less harm. We will understand harm as the non satisfaction of the basic
needs of a being. Besides, it is important to note that depending on the group that we
are referring to, the notion of harm should be understood as meaning more or less
things. That depends on the needs of the different groups. For example, a group of
animals will have less needs than a group of humans, and the consequence of this is
that in the case of animals probably is quite correct to consider mainly pain and
70
pleasure, whereas in the case of humans we will need to have into account more values
(life, freedom, knowledge, perspectives of the future...), which are in a complex relation
between them. In any case, the satisfaction of the basic needs will be our guide to
decide what are the relevant aspects of the situation, and to decide if the situation is
better or worse. Maybe a consequentialist approach can be problematic as a criterion
for deciding how to act, but it is not so problematic if we use it as a criterion for
deciding what constitutes progress. We will explain how we can uso such a conception
to assess for big changes in society and we will deal with criticisms to this kind of view.
The second premiss has to do with the possibility of the existence of an impartial
point of view. This idea has received some criticism, being Bernard Williams one of the
critics. We will explain those criticism and we will try to answer to them. It is worth
noting that the point of view of the historian who judges a past change as progressive
or regressive can be much more free of interests and personal bondings than that of
the agent who is ready to act, so some of the objections against consequentalism
disappear in this context. Furthermore, considering just the basic needs of people and
other beings makes it easier to consider things from an impartial point of view, because
we reduce the quantity of calculus that we need. Moreover, focusing on basic needs
give us a hierarchy of satisfactions that can be useful to avoid some abuses that could
occur without this hierarchy, as for example that the fun of a lot of people counted
more that the humiliation of just one.
Accepting these two premises can help us to explain what we intuitively consider
the main cases of moral progress regarding the exclusion of moral groups that we can
see in History.
Bibliography
- Singer, P. Practical Ethics, Cambridge University Press, New York, 1999
- Singer, P. The Expanding Circle, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 2011
- Williams, B. Philosophy as a Humanistic Discipline, Princeton University Press,
Princeton, 2005
- Williams, B. Utilitarianism: For and Against, with J.J.C. Smart, Cambridge
University Press, Cambridge 1973
71
Moral Progress and Moral Meddling
Nina Scherrer
University of Bern
nina.scherrer@philo.unibe.ch
72
of their growing ability to direct their own behavior accordingly. However, (better)
guidance of ones own behavior in light of ones own (improved) insight into what is
morally right or good whatever the content of morality , is a fundamentally
autonomous activity in the proper, self-legislative sense of the term, involving a series
of self-referential and self-driven capacities and skills such as self-knowledge, self-
control, self-integrity, self-love, self-trust, etc., all of which are exclusive or confined to
being determined, initiated and conducted through the first-person perspective. Thus,
to try to move or guide someone else to recognize the morally right or good better or
to act accordingly more often, proves futile. On the other hand, moral meddling is
wrong for a moral reason: It is an instance of disrespecting and devaluing both the
essence of the capacity as well as the right to be a moral agent and to improve as such,
both in those whom one attempts to improve and, thereby, in oneself.
A pertinent objection to this assessment of moral meddling is that it sounds
deeply revisionist about some of our most cherished social practices such as our
giving authority to legal laws or our efforts to raise decent and responsible children, or
simply to have a word with a good friend who is crossing the line , the purpose of
which seems, in part, to be to achieve and guard a certain vision of what we deem as
morally acceptable and desirable behavior in others, worthy of promotion. The critique
of moral meddling, however, does not hold that every incident of interfering with
others affairs is wrong, but that any such attempt cannot and should not be motivated
or guided by a certain type of goal, viz. moral progress. Thus, we may still punish under
the authority of law, interfere with other countries policies, or implement educational
programs; but whatever good comes directly out of this, it will not be an instance of
moral progress, and something else, if anything, must ground these practices.
According to the account, there is only one type or mode of moral progress, and that
is self-improvement.
73
Individual moral development and moral progress
Anders Schinkel
VU University Amsterdam
a.schinkel@vu.nl
Doret de Ruyter
VU University Amsterdam
d.j.de.ruyter@vu.nl
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 seems to be 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? Is the kind of progress we might make as adults
of the same kind as that we might make in our growth to adulthood, or is a different
notion of progress at play here? And if we can settle on (an) adequate definition(s) of
individual moral progress, how much progress do we typically make from childhood to
adulthood, and as adults? In this paper we approach these questions through analyses
of 1) the concept of moral progress and 2) the psychology of moral development. Thus,
while moral progress is also conceivable at a collective level (different collective levels
in fact), our focus will be on the individual level. We will, however, take a brief look at
the connections between the two levels.
With respect to the concept of progress we distinguish between a weak and a
strong conception. Whereas according to the former progress is simply positively
evaluated change, the latter adds the criterion of irreversibility. These conceptions are
to be conceived of as the extremes of a spectrum. We take complete irreversibility to
be impossible in the case of moral progress; but we only speak of progress where the
positively evaluated change cannot be made undone without difficulty in other
words, where development rather than mere change has taken place.
Progress can be conceived in terms of movement towards an end-state or as
improvement according to a certain standard or criterion. On logical as well as
psychological grounds we argue that the notion of individual moral progress does not
presuppose development towards a predetermined end-state; different types of moral
74
maturity and even moral exemplariness are conceivable. Moreover, even at the
individual level progress may be local rather than global (e.g. pertaining to some areas
of moral life but not to others, or concerning affect, but not cognition).
The most significant moral progress, however, occurs where integration of
different aspects of the moral domain and of cognition, affect, motivation, and action
take place; i.e. where a moral identity is developed. But pace Blasi and Colby and
Damon we should not confuse robustness of moral identity with centrality of the moral
to a persons identity. Beyond a certain threshold it is the former that matters. Moral
development need not culminate in moral sainthood, but hopefully it does culminate
in moral solidity.
A question that might unsettle all of this is whether there are any stable criteria
for moral progress; for if all such criteria (including meta-criteria by which we evaluate
changes in the criteria we use) are changeable and in fact do change over time,
progress becomes a relative notion all so-called progress would then be progress
relative to the criteria we happen to use at the time. In our view this problem is best
addressed by taking a hermeneutical approach according to which moral progress is
assessed through continuously renewed interpretations of moral experience and moral
concepts. Some aspects of human moral experience must be seen as inescapable, and
need to be done justice to; the conversation about this is ongoing and has been for
centuries, even millennia but it can be seen as a conversation, rather than a
cacophony of voices, and this is a ground for cautious optimism about the possibility
of justifying our notion of individual moral progress.
75
No moral progress without an objective moral ontology
Jaron Schoone
Berlage Lyceum
j.schoone@berlagelyceum.eu
One of the definitions of philosophy is: the study of presuppositions. While many
philosophers and scholars agree that human history exhibits moral progress, there
seems to be confusion about the presupposed moral ontology that such a view entails.
Moral ontology is of course the sub discipline of ethics which discusses whether such
things as moral facts, values and duties exist objectively, where objective means that
such facts, values and duties would exist independently from anyones personal beliefs.
Thus, for example, the Holocaust would be morally wrong in the objective sense if it
were wrong even in a world where the Nazis would have succeeded in killing or
brainwashing everyone who disagreed with their politics, therefore leaving no human
beings alive who would know that the Holocaust was wrong. Many scholars have a
negative view of objective moral ontology, claiming that there are no such things as
objective moral facts, values and duties. Some of these scholars would also reject the
notion of moral progress. But many scholars affirm the existence of moral progress
although their ethical theory lacks objective moral facts, values and duties. The goals
of this paper are twofold. First, this paper will argue that moral progress presupposes
the existence of objective moral facts, values and duties. Therefore, denying the
existence of objective moral facts, values and duties while affirming the existence of
moral progress will inevitably lead to a contradiction.
To reach this goal, the term moral progress must be carefully examined. Moral
progress is not simply the temporal statement that there have been changes in moral
reasoning over time, but it is the belief that one can see some kind of improvement in
the history of morality. For instance: slavery used to be widespread but most nations
currently agree that slavery is wrong, and have abolished slavery. This is seen as moral
progress. But why does abolishing slavery constitute moral progress and not simply
moral change? The existence of some objective moral facts seems to be implicit in the
statement that abolishing slavery constitutes moral progress, namely the fact that
slavery is morally wrong. These facts act as a measuring instrument for moral progress
and without such a measuring instrument there is no way to identify moral progress.
Take the example of slavery once more. How would one react if someone would argue
that the abolishment of slavery was an example of moral regress because slavery is
morally right or perhaps part of the natural order of things? Either one would have to
76
take a relativist position and withhold judgment, or one would have to argue that there
is an objective fact, namely the fact that slavery is wrong, and that those who disagree
with that fact are simply mistaken.
However, if this is true then belief in moral progress does not simply presuppose any
kind of moral ontology, but it presupposes a very specific kind of moral ontology; one
that includes the existence of objective moral facts. But there are very few ethical
theories that actually acknowledge the existence of such objective moral facts, values
and duties, although some appear to refer to them. This leads to the second goal of
this paper, which is to show that there are in fact ethical theories which fall victim to
the aforementioned contradiction: affirming moral progress while denying the
existence of objective moral facts, values and duties. One ethical theory in particular,
utilitarianism as advocated by dr. Peter Singer, will be examined. Several arguments will
be provided to show that Singers utilitarianism cannot include the notion of moral
progress. The paper will conclude with a short remark on ethical theories that do have
the necessary moral ontology that is required to affirm the existence of moral progress.
77
Moral progress by increased empirical knowledge and real life
experience
Thomas Schramme
University of Hamburg
thomas.schramme@uni-hamburg.de
78
Moral Progress, Moral Plurality, and Mills Paradox
Christian Seidel
Friedrich-Alexander Universitt
christian.seidel@fau.de
The evaluation of states of affairs is a pivotal task for many moral theories. A
neglected question, however, is how processes leading from one state of affairs to
another are to be evaluated. One category (amongst others) specifically geared
towards the gradable evaluation of processes is the idea of moral progress. But
what constitutes moral progress, and how does it relate to the moral evaluation of
states of affairs? A straightforward answer is that moral progress is nothing but a matter
of attaining a morally better state of affairs. More precisely, according to the Simple
Reductive View of Moral Progress, the extent to which a process from a state of affairs
s1 at t1 to a state of affairs s2 at t2 (with t1 < t2) shows moral progress is a (monotonically
increasing) function of how much s2 is morally better than s1.
This view reduces moral progress to a comparison of two states of affairs and
induces a very liberal understanding of moral progress: Suppose that the amount of
human well-being is one property relevant to the moral assessment of states of affairs;
then the Simple Reductive View holds that a process of population growth from 100
happy people to 1.000 equally happy people where everything else is kept constant is
a moral progress even if these 1.0000 people act exactly the same (possibly nasty)
way and hold exactly the same (possibly outrageous) moral beliefs as the 100 people
did. This overstretches the common-sense understanding of moral progress as an
improvement related to peoples behaviour and mind-set. So according to Subject-
Centred Reductive Views of Moral Progress, the extent to which a process from a state
of affairs s1 at t1 to a state of affairs s2 at t2 (with t1 < t2) shows moral progress is a
(monotonically increasing) function of (1) the extent to which the moral subjects in s 2
act better than the moral subjects in s1, and of (2) the extent to which the moral
subjects in s2 hold better moral beliefs than the moral subjects in s1.
This family of views does not compare states of affairs as a whole with respect
to a common scale of moral evaluation, but only compares some features of these
states (viz. those related to the actions and mind-set of moral subjects).
The present paper discusses one complication and one more fundamental problem of
the Subject-Centred View (which is introduced in Section 1). The complication arises
from the two-dimensionality of this view: What if people act better, but hold worse
moral beliefs, or vice versa? To induce a total order of the set of possible processes
79
(which may plausibly seen to be a theoretical condition of adequacy for a theory of
moral evaluation of processes), the Subject-Centred View obviously requires some
trade-off between the two dimensions (1) and (2). As I will show (in Section 2), this
trade-off is a difficult one to make, complicated even further by the fact that the two
dimensions are not wholly independent: On one practical reading of the dimension
(2), a moral belief is better than another if (under realistic assumptions about human
motivation and practical rationality) it induces people to act better. Thus, dimension (2)
would itself be a function of dimension (1), and the Subject-Centred Reductive View
reduces to a one-dimensional assessment of states of affairs according to the goodness
of the actions within these states. But insofar as acting better is (even on non-
consequentialist accounts) at least partially a matter of bringing about better state of
affairs, the Subject-Centred Reductive View threatens to ultimately collapse into the
Simple Reductive View.
The collapse can be resisted, though, by noting an alternative reading of
dimension (2): Holding better moral beliefs may just be a matter of holding more true
moral beliefs; and as long as the truth of a moral belief is not a matter of its practical
effects, dimensions (1) and (2) will be independent of each other. However, I show (in
Section 3) that under this reading, the Subject-Centred Reductive View is subject to a
Paradox which traces back to John Stuart Mills discussion of freedom of expression in
On Liberty: Given that the two dimensions are independent (such that maximising
along one dimension has no counterbalancing effects on the other dimension), the
View implies that for any given status quo state of affairs s0, there is an end point (a
supremum) of moral progress namely the state of affairs s among all states
attainable from s0 such that the number of morally right actions among people in s*
and the number of true beliefs people hold in s* are both maximised. But clearly, both
the number of morally right actions and of true moral beliefs are maximised only if
each person acts the same way and holds the same beliefs (since if people acted and
thought differently, one could always increase the number of right actions and true
beliefs by letting each person do the union of all morally right actions done by other
people and letting her think the union of all true moral beliefs held by other people).
In other words, the ideal of moral progress which the Subject-Centred Reductive View
is committed to is that people live and think in conformity moral plurality in the sense
of multiple morally different lifestyles and multiple moral views is wiped out. But as Mill
pointed out in On Liberty, moral plurality in this sense is itself essential to moral
progress. So the Subject-Centred Reductive View ends up in Mills Paradox: Boosting
moral progress will increase conformity, which itself curbs moral progress.
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After briefly discussing Mills own (unsuccessful) attempt at solving the Paradox
by introducing moral dummy views (in Section 4), the paper concludes with a
methodological outlook (in Section 5): If Mill is right in holding that moral plurality is
essential to moral progress, then the Subject-Centred Reductive View fails. Indeed this
failure points out that there are strong reasons to reject any reductive view, because
the kind of moral plurality required to stimulate moral progress is essentially a path-
related property, i.e. a property which has to be sustained above a certain threshold
all along the path or process which leads from one state of affairs to another. This is
why attempts to reduce evaluation of processes to evaluation of states of affairs are
bound to fail.
The upshot of this discussion is that thinking about moral progress might have
surprising implications for theoretical normative ethics since it suggests that the moral
evaluation of processes is not straightforwardly reducible to the moral evaluation of
states of affairs. Given that in everyday life and politics, moral evaluations of processes
are ubiquitous, perhaps ethicists should think more and harder about this intricate
issue.
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How do we measure peoples Moral Progress?
Sean Sinclair
Leeds University
sean.sinclair@abbotresearch.co.uk
82
thinking does not. I conclude that even if Kohlberg successfully characterises the
normal development of moral thinking, earlier stage thinking is not always inferior to
later stage thinking.
There are additional problems with the Defining Issues Test, the test which is
most commonly used to operationalise Kohlberg's ideas. This asks respondents to say
what they would do about certain dilemmas. Respondents are then offered various
reasons they might have for doing it, corresponding to different Kohlbergian levels,
and asked to say which reasons they prefer. The test finds a lot more respondents
scoring at stage 5 than Kohlberg's original test, in which respondents were asked to
state their reasons for themselves. Narvaez has argued that this is because many
subjects are capable of thinking intuitively at stage 5, and they can recognise their
stage 5 motivations when presented with them in the DIT, but they are not capable of
articulating those reasons for themselves as Kohlberg's test demanded.
But this analysis plays into the hands of "debunking" style comments from
psychologists such as Jonathan Haidt, to the effect that intuitive moral judgments do
not have the objectively constrained character that philosophers have traditionally held
moral thought to have. Moral intuitions have been shown to be driven by all sorts of
disreputable biases. So philosophers need moral thought to be more explicitly
reasoned than the intuitive judgments which Narvaez defends, both the sake of truth-
conduciveness and for the sake of Habermasian discourse ethics.
In fact, ethics classes are directed at producing exactly such explicitly reasoned
judgments. But unsurprisingly, the evidence that they produce progress on the DIT is
patchy. Lawrence reviewed 14 studies of interventions based on DIT evaluations and
found that only half produced significant developmental change. Schlaefli reviewed 55
studies and found that "the overall power of moral education programs ... is in the small
range". Self ran an ethical reasoning skills course lasting 16 weeks for two hours a week
which produced no change on the DIT.
Rather than concluding that most ethics courses are poor, I conclude that the
DIT is not a good measure of the kind of progress that moral philosophers aim to
produce. I therefore defend an alternative test based on Capella's concept of argument
repertoire. Cappella measures the quality of an opinion by asking the opinion holder
to state the reasons they have for holding the opinion, and then the reasons other
people might have for holding the opposite opinion. Subjects are scored on how many
reasons they give. As a test of opinion quality, this has been shown to be reliable and
valid.
A strength of Cappella's test is its coding for and directly eliciting
counterarguments. I offer theoretical and empirical reasons for thinking that awareness
83
of counterarguments is a key measure of the quality of an opinion, and therefore of
moral progress. The theoretical rationale is that, paradoxically, to confirm an moral
opinion one must look for the reasons against. At the limit, if you know all the reasons
against your opinion, but nevertheless the reasons you know of which favour your
opinion outweigh the known reasons against, then your opinion can be held to be
reliable or fully rational, even if you don't know all the reasons in favour. The empirical
evidence I cite is that becoming aware of opposing arguments is more likely to produce
opinion change than other supposed epistemically desirable changes such as
becoming aware of relevant information. The best explanation of this observation is
that awareness of opposing arguments is better at revealing weaknesses in people's
original thinking, which makes it more likely that their subsequent opinions are fully
justifiable.
Based on this, my proposed test of moral progress involves asking participants
to consider a randomised set of dilemmas before a course of ethics classes, stating and
defending their views regarding each dilemma. The same participants are then asked
to repeat the exercise for a different set of dilemmas after the course. Pre-test and
post-test Argument Repertoire scores are totalled across all participants. I contend that
as a general rule, an ethics course can be held to have been effective if and only if the
post-test total of argument repertoire scores is significantly greater than the pre-test
total.
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Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc: Some Benefits of Rationalization
Jesse Summers
Duke University
j.s.summers@gmail.com
17
Jonathan Haidt, The Emotional Dog and Its Rational Tail: A Social Intuitionist Approach to Moral
Judgment., Psychological review 108, no. 4 (2001).
Benjamin Libet, Do We Have Free Will?, Journal of Consciousness Studies 6, no. 8-9 (1999).
Daniel Wegner and Thalia Wheatley, Apparent Mental Causation: Sources of the Experience of Will.,
American Psychologist 54, no. 7 (1999).
Richard E. Nisbett and Timothy DeCamp Wilson, Telling More Than We Can Know: Verbal Reports on
Mental Processes, Psychological Review 84(1977).Fiery Cushman and Joshua Greene, The Philosopher
in the Theater, in The Social Psychology of Morality: Exploring the Causes of Good and Evil, ed. Mario
Mikulincer and Phillip R.
Shaver (Washington, DC: APA Press, 2011).Joshua D. Greene, The Secret Joke of Kants Soul, in Volume
3: The Neuroscience of Morality: Emotion, Brain Disorders, and Development, ed. Walter Sinnott-
Armstrong (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2007).
Michael S. Gazzaniga, Whos in Charge?: Free Will and the Science of the Brain (New York: HarperCollins,
2011).
85
An alternative response to the evidence distinguishes explanatory (causal) from
justificatory reasons, and then concludes that only justificatory reasons matter to any
moral discussion. Morality, according to this response, concerns itself only with
justifications we offer sincerely, regardless of any (other) empirical causes of our
actions. This second response, however, underestimates the range and power of the
existing psychological evidence and risks simply conceding that we are systematically
mistaken about our motivation.
Rationalization should be taken seriously, both in itself and as a threat to rational
moral progress. It is both philosophically and practically worrying if we are
systematically mistaken about our motivation, even if our justifications are good. For
example, rationalization interferes with moral assessments like praise and blame, it
impedes self-understanding, and it hinders self-improvement.
What has been overlooked, however, is that there are potential benefits to
rationalization, to offering sincere justifications of my actions even when those
justifications misrepresent my motivation. And these benefits of rationalization also
explain how rational moral progress is possible, even if the psychological evidence is
correct. I offer an account of rationalization that builds on Robert Audis account,18 and
I show that such an account makes clear at least two significant benefits of
rationalization.
The first benefit is that rationalization applies practical pressure to make my
reasoning consistent. I neednt endorse a justification in order to believe that it could
apply. But when I rationalize that I handed the homeless man $1 because I wanted to
feed him rather than to redistribute wealthboth of which I think are good
reasonsI have now prima facie endorsed one of these justifications. Endorsing that
justification then puts me under practical pressure to be consistent with my own
reasoning in future cases, even if I misrepresented my motivation in this case. I can
become a better person by rationalizing, even though the rationalization is
misunderstanding my motivation. Therefore, rationalization leads me to understand
my present reasons for action in a way that shapes my future ones.
Rationalization also helps establish meaningful patterns of action that come to
change our motivation over time. If and when we consider why we act in this or that
way, there is never sufficient evidence. We nevertheless assemble some evidence to
identify patterns of action. As psychotherapists realize, though, assembling evidence
and identifying patterns both actively shape our self-understanding, which then shapes
future decisions. Our rationalizations can therefore make true, over time, that we act
18
Robert Audi, Rationalization and Rationality, Synthese 65, no. 2 (1985).
86
on motives that we currently misrepresent ourselves as having. Therefore, by
misunderstanding ourselves in precisely the way psychologists suggest we do, we set
ourselves up for rational moral progress.
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On Harm as unifying ethical principle
Tanja de Villiers-Botha
Stellenbosch University
tdev@sun.ac.za
The putative disunity of morality has become a hot topic in moral psychology in
recent years. This is especially prevalent in the work of Jonathan Haidt and his
collaborators (Haidt, Joseph 2004, Iyer, Koleva et al. 2012, Graham, Haidt et al. 2013),
who have been advocating for a broadened understanding of what morality entails.
Such an understanding supposedly shows that Theres more to morality than harm
and fairness (Haidt, Graham 2007). In reaction, philosophers have been quick to draw
philosophical conclusions. Sinnott-Armstrong and Wheatly (2012), for example, use
Haidt and his colleagues research to substantiate their claim that morality is
disunified; they argue that not all judgements that are intended to be about morality
are judgements about harms being committed. This leads them to conclude that there
is nothing about the content of moral judgements that unifies them in any relevant
way. Elsewhere (Sinnott-Armstrong, Wheatley 2013) they argue that their findings
should encourage moral scientists to develop a more taxonomic approach to morality
and to stop approaching it in a monolithic way, since morality has no unifying feature
about which distinctive generalisations can be made (4).
The crux of the argument by philosophers and psychologists like Haidt et al.,
Sinnott-Armstrong and Wheatly, and Jesse Prinz (Prinz 2007b, Prinz 2007a)is that
research in moral psychology shows that some people tend to moralise behaviours
above and beyond those that pertain to harm, thus they include prohibitions based on
social position and purity considerations in their moral judgements, for example. From
this they draw a normative conclusion: there are behaviours over and above those
pertaining to harm that should be moralised. What all of these theorists have in
common is the assumption that our normative theories should reflect ordinary peoples
habitual moral intuitions. In this paper, I want to question this assumption, which
underlies much of the work done in moral psychology and moral philosophy. My
argument will be that moral philosophy, as normative theory, is not in the business of
explaining and/or shoring up peoples ordinary moral intuitions. On the contrary, I
would argue that it is the business of moral philosophy to determine which moral
judgements are justified. In order to do this, a normative theory needs to identify and
justify (a) legitimate moral principle(s). I will argue, contra Haidt et al., that minimising
non-consensual harm is just such a principle. In essence, my argument will be that
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there shouldnt be more to morality than harm, where harm is understood as
injurious to happiness or damage to an interest to which a person has a right to
borrow two phrases from Mill (1999).
Having a principle that unifies morality also provides us with a standard against
which we can evaluate moral practice, which in turn allows us to develop a conception
of what moral progress would entail.
References
- GRAHAM, J., HAIDT, J., KOLEVA, S., MOTYL, M., IYER, R., WOJCIK, S. and DITTO,
P.H., 2013. Moral foundations theory: The pragmatic validity of moral pluralism.
Advances in experimental social psychology, 47, pp. 55-130.
- HAIDT, J. and GRAHAM, J., 2007. When morality opposes justice: Conservatives
have moral intuitions that liberals may not recognize. Social Justice Research,
20(1), pp. 98-116.
- HAIDT, J. and JOSEPH, C., 2004. Intuitive ethics: How innately prepared intuitions
generate culturally variable virtues. Daedalus, 133(4), pp. 55-66.
- IYER, R., KOLEVA, S., GRAHAM, J., DITTO, P. and HAIDT, J., 2012. Understanding
libertarian morality: The psychological dispositions of self-identified libertarians.
PloS one, 7(8), pp. e42366.
- MILL, J.S., 1999. On liberty. Broadview Press.
- PRINZ, J.J., 2007a. The emotional construction of morals. Oxford: Oxford : Oxford
University Press.
- PRINZ, J.J., 2007b. Can moral obligations be empirically discovered? Midwest
Studies in Philosophy, 31(1), pp. 271-291.
- SINNOTT-ARMSTRONG, W. and WHEATLEY, T., 2013. Are moral judgments
unified? Philosophical Psychology, (ahead-of-print), pp. 1-24.
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Moral Progress and Motivation
Amna Whiston
University of Reading
a.whiston@pgr.reading.ac.uk
19
I take meta-ethical cognitivism to be true; that moral judgements have cognitive content and that
the state of mind of accepting an ought judgement is one of belief that -ing is morally obligatory.
20
So that although the belief that some action is morally obligatory is constitutive of the
motivationally efficacious emotional experience based on the sense of duty, the former does not entail
the later.
21
So that the motive of duty can be disentangled not only from the strictly Kantian conception of it,
but also from a standing desire to do what is right, understood de dicto.
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Second, I try to say more about the relevance of a meta-ethical insight into the
nature of moral motivation and more specifically of my account of the moral motive
for the idea of moral progress. Whilst neutral with respect to any substantive views
about moral progress, an emotional account of the moral motive I present here makes
sense of the idea that the foundational aspect of moral progress is the moral agents
direct, intuitive recognition of and the subsequent emotional response to value.
Ultimately, I argue that an understanding of the moral motive as a moral emotion
explains the intuition that moral progress can be hindered by the rational critical
scrutiny of or submissions to social institutions and practices and by consequentialist
and cost-benefit attitudes and motives.
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Moral Progress and Moral Ignorance
We might know more about the moral facts than before. We didnt know slavery
was wrong; now we do. And things might really get better, morally speaking. Slavery
existed; now it no longer does (if only). So things may progress both in theory as well
as in practice. This paper will concern the former, and in particular the issue of what it
entails. Does progress in moral theory entail that we are responsible for more things?
Are we now responsible for slavery (would it occur) just because we discovered the
moral facts?
According to a growing number of philosophers, this picture is highly
misguided: moral ignorance doesnt excuse, never (cf. Moody-Adams 1994, 1997;
Harman 2011, 2014; Arpaly & Schroeder 2014; among others). Surely, they will add,
ignorance about non-moral facts (factual ignorance) can excuse. If you do not know
your neighbour is keeping slaves, you might be excused for not informing the relevant
authorities (that is, depending on whether your factual ignorance is blameworthy). But
if you do know your neighbour is keeping slaves, but just not that slavery is wrong, you
might not be excused.
Proponents of this view typically appeal to one or both of the following
considerations. First consideration: as opposed to factual ignorance, moral ignorance
never excuses because moral ignorance always implies lack of good will. Slavery just
testifies of lack of good will. Witness: Enjoying other peoples suffering speaks ill of
the agents will even if the enjoyment in question is encouraged by a corrupt and
corrupting society, and even if there is no moral theory available that disagrees.
(Arpaly & Schroeder 2014) Second consideration: as opposed to factual ignorance,
moral ignorance never excuses because the moral truth is always easily accessible.
Everyone can figure out that slavery is wrong. Witness: It seems implausible to say that
it would take a moral genius to see through the wrongness of chattel slavery.
(Guerrero 2007)
In this paper, Ill clearly distinguish both considerations, and present challenges
to both. This will undercut the idea that moral ignorance never excuses.
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The Order of Humanity as the Fulcrum of Moral Progress
Anosike Wilson
wilsoniyke@yahoo.com
Without the concept of humanity, the moral world is nothing but a limbo.
However, humanity does not dwell in the abstract but exists in relationships thereby
forming a community or society. Morality, strictly speaking, concerns the behaviours of
individuals in community or society with respect to the upholding of the dignity of
humanity. What this means is that behind the concept of humanity lies an orderthat
unifying conditionwhich ensures or dictates the position or dignity of humanity.
Any talk of moral progress then must first of all identify such an order by and through
which activities and behaviours are measured. This means that progress (and
conversely retrogress) is not a neutral term. It moves towards specific ends and these
ends must be defined by the possibilities of ensuring the adequate position or dignity
of the human entities.
Our belief that human beings can identify and advance towards the prescription
of such an order is the bedrock of morals. This belief, excludes both ethical determinism
and, a warranty that such movement will actually be undertaken or what is expected at
the end if the movement is made. To paraphrase this in the words of Patrick Devlin, a
band of travellers can go forward together without knowing what they will find at the
end of the journey but they cannot keep in company if they do not journey in the same
direction.
In other words, we cannot talk of moral progress without (1) a direction-giving
principle (order) (2) community or unification (humanity).
It is on the nexus of these principles of order and commonality that moral
statements take their roots. Actions that are termed virtuous or vicious, right or wrong,
just or unjust, benevolent or inhuman have their distinction, condemnation and
exaltation from the sense of these two principles. In short, progressive actions
virtuousare ones that enable us reach or achieve the demands of the order without
losing or mutilating our commonality. Diversity either in the directive-giving principle
or practice of the demands of such principle cannot yield the idea of progress.
This said, there is what maybe conceived as minor infringements or unwanted
behaviours that can result in a slow-pace movement towards the direction being shown
or taking of positions required. Actions whose outright condemnation or harsh
treatment will in the end hamper or undermine the movement rather than slowing it.
These actions call or elicit an attitude that can best be described as tolerance, pity or
93
mercy. Tolerance becomes a virtue or right action in the sense that it encourages a
movement in the direction required by the order rather than undermining it. Toleration
in the context of moral progress is then not a neutral term.
The basic question that remains is this. where do we locate this direction-giving
principle? or put in another way, what projects this order that determines or
measures progress? In answering this question, we can distinguish three broad
strands or positions namely the metaphysical, the existential and the traditional. When
we say that the determinant of moral progress is metaphysical, we simply mean that
there is a zone of reference or inference that is beyond the activities of human beings
but at the same time extracts allegiance from the human community. It is from this
metaphysical sphere that the ideas of God, Religion, Worship etc emanates. Moral
action, then, is cooperation with carrying out the dictates of the metaphysical entities.
Thus the rationale of moral action, including adherence to moral absolutes, is the hope
of friendship with the metaphysical which can be translated into running away from
consequences of disobedience or gaining the dignity of humanity.
The inherent implication is that the status quo that warrants metaphysical
commands or exhortation cannot be seen as progressive or best state of affairs.
Conversely, to turn away from moral norms which the metaphysical instituted on the
plea that they do not make sense, is to take the reverse of progress.
To say that the order that ensures moral progress is existential is to assent to
what Pollock called practical morality. Its basis is in the mass of continuous
experience half-consciously or unconsciously accumulated and embodied in the
morality of common sense. The first inference of commonsense with regard to moral
progress is compassion. It is the recognition that fellow human beings feel the same or
has the same need as one and thus have to be given the same attention as one craves.
On the end of the compassion spectrum is equality.
Traditionalism as order-giving principle can simply be put as the counsel of
ancestors. In traditionalism, the dignity of humanity is assured by the demands of the
ancestors and to deviate from such is retrogression.
The presentation thus aims at elucidating these order giving principles of
humanity and how they engender moral progress.
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Progress in History Hegel Reviewed
Bart Zandvoort
University College Dublin
bart.zantvoort@ucdconnect.ie
Hegel's philosophy of history has often been criticized for its supposedly nave
belief in social and moral progress. "World history," Hegel claims, "is the progress of
the consciousness of freedom."22 His portrayal of historical development as a
succession of increasingly free and rational forms of social organization has led to a
number of well-known, more or less caricatured criticisms. Amongst these are, most
notably, the claim that Hegel thinks history follows a pre-set, teleological path of
development, and therefore nothing truly new or surprising can happen; the notion,
famously updated by Fukuyama, that there is an 'end' to history; and the claim that for
Hegel this end consists in the Prussian state of his day as it is portrayed in his
Philosophy of Right.
As the literature on Hegel over the last few decades has shown, these
interpretations are, for the most part, overly simplified or simply mistaken. Instead of
returning to these issues, therefore, I will approach Hegel's philosophy of history in a
novel way focusing more on the Phenomenology of Spirit, Philosophy of Right and a
number of early texts rather than on the Philosophy of History in order to reconstruct
Hegel's theory of historical development and moral progress in a way which is relevant
to contemporary interests.
I will begin by outlining the idea that we can distinguish in Hegel between two
levels or 'orders' of historical development: the development of reasons, ideas and
norms; and the development of actually existing social practices and institutions. The
possibility of moral judgment has to do with the coincidence or discrepancy between
these two levels. The development of practices and institutions can 'lag behind' the
development of ideas: for example, a society may have ideas about gender equality or
social justice which are more advanced than actually existing practices, laws and
institutions. Conversely, it is also possible for ideas and norms to fall behind actual
practice: experiences of freedom and equality can emerge from within institutions, and
show prevailing laws, norms or ideas to be false or obsolete.
For Hegel the morality of social institutions is not measured against an eternal
standard of reason, but against ideas and norms which emerge historically in a process
22G.W.F. Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of World History, trans. H.B. Nisbet (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1975).
95
of social development. The problem is that a discrepancy or asynchrony can arise
between norms and practices, between the 'rational' and the 'actual'. According to
Hegel, on my account, this discrepancy is a result of a tendency to 'inertia' in society:
social hierarchies, laws, institutions and economic privileges tend to entrench
themselves and resist change. In the Philosophy of Right, for example, Hegel shows
how civil society, the sphere of private interest, tends to dominate and undermine the
political sphere of rational, free decisions. One of the main problems for the possibility
of moral progress, on Hegel's account, is therefore this inertia inherent in society: both
institutions and ideas can become obsolete and resist change when they have already
been shown to be unjust, inadequate or irrational.
While Hegel describes history as a succession of increasingly free and rational
states, he indicates that with more advanced level of social organization the capacity
of society to reproduce itself and the capacity of private interests to resist change also
increases. Moral and social progress is therefore always potentially counteracted by an
ever greater danger of social stagnation, and by increasingly violent revolutionary
upheavals which are needed to break this social inertia. In the end, therefore, I argue
that Hegel's view of progress in history is much more ambiguous than is commonly
assumed.
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