I don’t use it that way. I like lots of moral changes in the past 250 years but feel the process behind it isn’t something I want to outsource morality to. Just like I like having opposable thumbs but feel uncomfortable letting evolution shape humans any further. We should do that ourselves so it doesn’t grind down our complex values.
There are lots of people running around who think society in 1990 is somehow morally superior to society in 1890 on some metric of rightness beyond the similarity of their values to our own. This is the difference between someone being on the “wrong side of history” being merely a mistake in reasoning they should get over as soon as possible and it being a tragedy for them. A tragedy that perhaps kept repeating for every human society and individual in existence for nearly all of history.
This also suggests different strategies are appropriate for dealing with future moral change. I think we should be very cautious since I’m sure we don’t understand the process. Modern Western civilization doesn’t have narrative of “over time values became more and more like our own”, but “over time morality got better and better and this gives our society meaning!”. Its the difference between seeing “God guiding evolution” and confronting the full horror of Azathoth.
This is an Irrationality Game comment. (Though I’m actually not sure how it will score).
“Moral progress” simply describes moral change or value drift in the speaker’s preferred direction. Very confident (~95%).
I don’t use it that way. I like lots of moral changes in the past 250 years but feel the process behind it isn’t something I want to outsource morality to. Just like I like having opposable thumbs but feel uncomfortable letting evolution shape humans any further. We should do that ourselves so it doesn’t grind down our complex values.
There are lots of people running around who think society in 1990 is somehow morally superior to society in 1890 on some metric of rightness beyond the similarity of their values to our own. This is the difference between someone being on the “wrong side of history” being merely a mistake in reasoning they should get over as soon as possible and it being a tragedy for them. A tragedy that perhaps kept repeating for every human society and individual in existence for nearly all of history.
This also suggests different strategies are appropriate for dealing with future moral change. I think we should be very cautious since I’m sure we don’t understand the process. Modern Western civilization doesn’t have narrative of “over time values became more and more like our own”, but “over time morality got better and better and this gives our society meaning!”. Its the difference between seeing “God guiding evolution” and confronting the full horror of Azathoth.