One ideal against which we could gauge moral progress without it being useless or self-defeating if taken to the extreme would be “Causing less suffering and death is good.”
Well, the most straightforward way to judge success along this metric is to compare the amount of suffering. The problem with this metric is that the contribution of technological progress will dominate any contribution from ethical progress.
Might we be causing harm in new ways as well as ceasing to cause harm in other ways, moving backward overall? Even though Americans can’t keep slaves, they do get a lot of their goods from sweatshops. The prejudice against gays may be lessening, but has the prejudice against Middle Easterners increased to the point where it cancels out that progress? Women got the right to vote, but shortly before that, children were forced into the school system.
Furthermore, it’s not a priori obvious that the contribution to less suffering is what you think it is any of the examples you listed. It’s possible that the people working in “sweatshops” are better off there than wherever they were before, this in fact seems likely since they chose to work there. It’s possible that our modern attitude towards gender roles and sexuality is causing more unhappy marriages and children growing up in bad homes and thus increases suffering; conversely, maybe our attitudes towards gender are correct and our prejudice towards (Muslim) Middle Easterners is encouraging them to adopt it and thus our prejudice is reducing suffering on net. As for the right to vote, well there’s a slight positive effect from making the women feel empowered, but the main effect is who wins elections, and whether they make better or worse decisions, which seems hard to measure.
My point is that doing these types of calculations is much harder than you seem to realize.
My point is that doing these types of calculations is much harder than you seem to realize.
I do realize that making these calculations is difficult. To be fair, when I first brought this up, I was talking about a completely different subject, in a comment that was already long enough and absolutely did not need a long tangent about the complexities of this added in. Then, I began exploring some of the complexities, hoping that you’d expand on them and you instead chose to view my limited engagement in the topic as a sign that doing these kinds of calculations is harder than I realize. This is frustrating for two reasons. The first reason is that no matter what I said, it would not be possible for me to cover the topic in entirety, especially not in a single message board comment. The second reason is that instead of continuing my discussion and adding to it, you changed the direction of the conversation each of the last two times you replied to me.
It might be that you’d make an excellent conversation partner to explore this with, but I am not certain you are interested in that. Are you interested in exploring this topic or were you just hoping to convince me that I don’t realize how complicated this is?
Then, I began exploring some of the complexities, hoping that you’d expand on them and you instead chose to view my limited engagement in the topic as a sign that doing these kinds of calculations is harder than I realize.
Sorry about that, your examples pattern matched to what someone who wanted to question contemporary practices without actually questioning contemporary ethics would write.
Thanks, Eugine. I can see in hindsight why I would look like that to you, but before hand, I didn’t expect anyone to jump on examples that weren’t elaborated upon to the degree you appear to have been expecting. I’m interested in continuing this discussion for reasons unrelated to the comment that originally spurred this off, as I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how to measure the ethical behavior of humans. I’m still wondering if you’re interested in talking about this. Are you?
Well, the most straightforward way to judge success along this metric is to compare the amount of suffering. The problem with this metric is that the contribution of technological progress will dominate any contribution from ethical progress.
Furthermore, it’s not a priori obvious that the contribution to less suffering is what you think it is any of the examples you listed. It’s possible that the people working in “sweatshops” are better off there than wherever they were before, this in fact seems likely since they chose to work there. It’s possible that our modern attitude towards gender roles and sexuality is causing more unhappy marriages and children growing up in bad homes and thus increases suffering; conversely, maybe our attitudes towards gender are correct and our prejudice towards (Muslim) Middle Easterners is encouraging them to adopt it and thus our prejudice is reducing suffering on net. As for the right to vote, well there’s a slight positive effect from making the women feel empowered, but the main effect is who wins elections, and whether they make better or worse decisions, which seems hard to measure.
My point is that doing these types of calculations is much harder than you seem to realize.
Edit: Also, what wedrifid said.
I do realize that making these calculations is difficult. To be fair, when I first brought this up, I was talking about a completely different subject, in a comment that was already long enough and absolutely did not need a long tangent about the complexities of this added in. Then, I began exploring some of the complexities, hoping that you’d expand on them and you instead chose to view my limited engagement in the topic as a sign that doing these kinds of calculations is harder than I realize. This is frustrating for two reasons. The first reason is that no matter what I said, it would not be possible for me to cover the topic in entirety, especially not in a single message board comment. The second reason is that instead of continuing my discussion and adding to it, you changed the direction of the conversation each of the last two times you replied to me.
It might be that you’d make an excellent conversation partner to explore this with, but I am not certain you are interested in that. Are you interested in exploring this topic or were you just hoping to convince me that I don’t realize how complicated this is?
Sorry about that, your examples pattern matched to what someone who wanted to question contemporary practices without actually questioning contemporary ethics would write.
Thanks, Eugine. I can see in hindsight why I would look like that to you, but before hand, I didn’t expect anyone to jump on examples that weren’t elaborated upon to the degree you appear to have been expecting. I’m interested in continuing this discussion for reasons unrelated to the comment that originally spurred this off, as I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how to measure the ethical behavior of humans. I’m still wondering if you’re interested in talking about this. Are you?
I’d be interested, although this should possibly be done in a different thread.
Alright. Choose a location.