So why hasn’t civilization figured that out already? Or is not teaching moral uncertainty some kind of Chesterton’s Fence, and teaching it widely would make the world even worse off on expectation?
This is sort of a rehash of sibling comments, but I think there are two factors to consider here.
The first is the rules. It is very important that people drive on the correct side of the road, and not have uncertainty about which side of the road is correct, and not very important whether they have a distinction between “correct for <country> in <year>” and “correct everywhere and for all time.”
The second is something like the goal. At one point, people thought it was very important that society have a shared goal, and worked hard to make it expansive; things like “freedom of religion” are the things civilization figured out to both have narrow shared goals (like “keep the peace”) and not expansive shared goals (like “as many get to Catholic Heaven as possible”). It is unclear to me whether we’re better off with moral uncertainty as generator for “narrow shared goals”, whether narrow shared goals is what we should be going for.
This is sort of a rehash of sibling comments, but I think there are two factors to consider here.
The first is the rules. It is very important that people drive on the correct side of the road, and not have uncertainty about which side of the road is correct, and not very important whether they have a distinction between “correct for <country> in <year>” and “correct everywhere and for all time.”
The second is something like the goal. At one point, people thought it was very important that society have a shared goal, and worked hard to make it expansive; things like “freedom of religion” are the things civilization figured out to both have narrow shared goals (like “keep the peace”) and not expansive shared goals (like “as many get to Catholic Heaven as possible”). It is unclear to me whether we’re better off with moral uncertainty as generator for “narrow shared goals”, whether narrow shared goals is what we should be going for.