Just to make things crisper, let’s move to a more concrete case for a moment… if I decide that this hammer is better than that hammer because it’s blue, is that valid in the sense you mean it? How could I tell?
The argument against moral progress is that judging one moral reference frame by another is circular and invalid—you need an outside view that doesn’t presuppose the truth of any moral reference frame.
The argument for is that such outside views are available, because things like (in)coherence aren’t moral values.
Asserting that some bases for comparison are “moral values” and others are merely “values” implicitly privileges a moral reference frame.
I still don’t understand what you mean when you ask whether it’s valid to do so, though. Again: if I decide that this hammer is better than that hammer because it’s blue, is that valid in the sense you mean it? How could I tell?
Asserting that some bases for comparison are “moral values” and others are merely “values” implicitly privileges a moral reference frame.
I don’t see why. The question of what makes a value a moral value is metaethical, not part of object-level ethics.
Again: if I decide that this hammer is better than that hammer because it’s blue, is that valid in the sense you mean it?
It isn’t valid as a moral judgement because “blue” isn’t a moral judgement, so a moral conclusion cannot validly follow from it.
Beyond that, I don’t see where you are going. The standard accusation of invalidity to judgements of moral progress, is based on circularity or question-begging. The Tribe who Like Blue things are going to judge having all hammers painted blue as moral progress, the Tribe who Like Red Things are going to see it as retrogressive.
But both are begging the question—blue is good, because blue is good.
The question of what makes a value a moral value is metaethical, not part of object-level ethics.
Sure. But any answer to that metaethical question which allows us to class some bases for comparison as moral values and others as merely values implicitly privileges a moral reference frame (or, rather, a set of such frames).
Beyond that, I don’t see where you are going.
Where I was going is that you asked me a question here which I didn’t understand clearly enough to be confident that my answer to it would share key assumptions with the question you meant to ask.
So I asked for clarification of your question.
Given your clarification, and using your terms the way I think you’re using them, I would say that whether it’s valid to class a moral change as moral progress is a metaethical question, and whatever answer one gives implicitly privileges a moral reference frame (or, rather, a set of such frames).
If you meant to ask me about my preferred metaethics, that’s a more complicated question, but broadly speaking in this context I would say that I’m comfortable calling any way of preferentially sorting world-states with certain motivational characteristics a moral frame, but acknowledge that some moral frames are simply not available to minds like mine.
So, for example, is it moral progress to transition from a social norm that in-practice-encourages randomly killing fellow group members to a social norm that in-practice-discourages it? Yes, not only because I happen to adopt a moral frame in which randomly killing fellow group members is bad, but also because I happen to have a kind of mind that is predisposed to adopt such frames.
If “better” is defined within a reference frame, there is not sensible was of defining moral progress. That is quite a hefty bullet to bite: one can no longer say that South Africa is better society after the fall of Apartheid, and so on.
But note, that “better” doesn’t have to question-beggingly mean “morally better”. it could mean “more coherent/objective/inclusive” etc.
That is quite a hefty bullet to bite: one can no longer say that South Africa is better society after the fall of Apartheid, and so on.
That’s hardly the best example you could have picked since there are obvious metrics by which South Africa can be quantifiably called a worse society now—e.g. crime statistics. South Africa has been called the “crime capital of the world” and the “rape capital of the world” only after the fall of the Apartheid.
That makes the lack of moral progress in South Africa a very easy bullet to bite—I’d use something like Nazi Germany vs modern Germany as an example instead.
In my experience, most people don’t think moral progress involves changing reference frames, for precisely this reason. If they think about it at all, that is.
Isn’t the idea of moral progress based on one reference frame being better than another?
Yes, as typically understood the idea of moral progress is based on treating some reference frames as better than others.
And is that valid or not? If you can validly decide some systems are better than others, you are some of the way to deciding which is best.
Can you say more about what “valid” means here?
Just to make things crisper, let’s move to a more concrete case for a moment… if I decide that this hammer is better than that hammer because it’s blue, is that valid in the sense you mean it? How could I tell?
The argument against moral progress is that judging one moral reference frame by another is circular and invalid—you need an outside view that doesn’t presuppose the truth of any moral reference frame.
The argument for is that such outside views are available, because things like (in)coherence aren’t moral values.
Asserting that some bases for comparison are “moral values” and others are merely “values” implicitly privileges a moral reference frame.
I still don’t understand what you mean when you ask whether it’s valid to do so, though. Again: if I decide that this hammer is better than that hammer because it’s blue, is that valid in the sense you mean it? How could I tell?
I don’t see why. The question of what makes a value a moral value is metaethical, not part of object-level ethics.
It isn’t valid as a moral judgement because “blue” isn’t a moral judgement, so a moral conclusion cannot validly follow from it.
Beyond that, I don’t see where you are going. The standard accusation of invalidity to judgements of moral progress, is based on circularity or question-begging. The Tribe who Like Blue things are going to judge having all hammers painted blue as moral progress, the Tribe who Like Red Things are going to see it as retrogressive. But both are begging the question—blue is good, because blue is good.
Sure. But any answer to that metaethical question which allows us to class some bases for comparison as moral values and others as merely values implicitly privileges a moral reference frame (or, rather, a set of such frames).
Where I was going is that you asked me a question here which I didn’t understand clearly enough to be confident that my answer to it would share key assumptions with the question you meant to ask.
So I asked for clarification of your question.
Given your clarification, and using your terms the way I think you’re using them, I would say that whether it’s valid to class a moral change as moral progress is a metaethical question, and whatever answer one gives implicitly privileges a moral reference frame (or, rather, a set of such frames).
If you meant to ask me about my preferred metaethics, that’s a more complicated question, but broadly speaking in this context I would say that I’m comfortable calling any way of preferentially sorting world-states with certain motivational characteristics a moral frame, but acknowledge that some moral frames are simply not available to minds like mine.
So, for example, is it moral progress to transition from a social norm that in-practice-encourages randomly killing fellow group members to a social norm that in-practice-discourages it? Yes, not only because I happen to adopt a moral frame in which randomly killing fellow group members is bad, but also because I happen to have a kind of mind that is predisposed to adopt such frames.
No, because “better” is defined within a reference frame.
If “better” is defined within a reference frame, there is not sensible was of defining moral progress. That is quite a hefty bullet to bite: one can no longer say that South Africa is better society after the fall of Apartheid, and so on.
But note, that “better” doesn’t have to question-beggingly mean “morally better”. it could mean “more coherent/objective/inclusive” etc.
That’s hardly the best example you could have picked since there are obvious metrics by which South Africa can be quantifiably called a worse society now—e.g. crime statistics. South Africa has been called the “crime capital of the world” and the “rape capital of the world” only after the fall of the Apartheid.
That makes the lack of moral progress in South Africa a very easy bullet to bite—I’d use something like Nazi Germany vs modern Germany as an example instead.
So much for avoiding the cliche.
In my experience, most people don’t think moral progress involves changing reference frames, for precisely this reason. If they think about it at all, that is.