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MORAL PROGRESS:
CONCEPT, MEASUREMENT, AND APPLICATION
VU UNIVERSITY, AMSTERDAM, 24-25 JUNE 2015
Abstracts
1
Abstracts keynotes
(in chronological order)
Wednesday, June 24th:
9:30: Slavery, Carbon, and Moral Progress (p. 3)
Dale Jamieson, New York University
14:00: Moral Progress and Human Agency (p. 4)
Michelle Moody-Adams, Columbia University
Thursday, June 25th:
9:30: The Possibility of Moral Progress (p. 5)
Martin van Hees, VU University
14:00: Locating Value in Moral Progress (p. 6)
Toni Rønnow-Rasmussen, Lund University
2
Slavery, Carbon, and Moral Progress
Keynote Address - June 24th, 9:30
Dale Jamieson
New York University
[email protected]
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
[email protected]
The idea of moral progress is a necessary presupposition of action for beings
whose influence on the world is usually quite circumscribed, and whose understanding
of the nature of that influence is necessarily limited and incomplete. We must believe
that moral progress is possible, and that it might have been realized in human experience
at some point in history, if we are to be confident that continued human action has any
point at all. But the idea of moral progress is not defensibly understood as capable of
yielding a principle, or set of principles, to guide moral or political action, or to
appropriately govern deliberations, undertaken with the aim of making the world “a
better place.” Thinkers who demand a “theory of moral progress,” and insist on some
means of “accounting” for the complexity of “gains and losses” over time, wrongly
demand that reflection about the idea of moral progress yield a determinate principle
or principles of moral and political action. But while the idea of moral progress cannot
directly yield such principles of action, it can serve as a plausible , if contestable, principle
of historical interpretation--among other plausible principles--to guide that backwardlooking reflection that helps shape our sense of living in a world in which human action
can make sense.
4
The Possibility of Moral Progress
Keynote Address – June 25th, 9:30
Martin van Hees
VU University
[email protected]
On one interpretation, moral progress refers to a reduction of the disparities
between our moral convictions and our actual behaviour: we make moral progress if we
act more often upon our moral beliefs. A second interpretation views moral progress as
a development of our moral views. Here progress is achieved when our moral beliefs
converge to the 'correct' moral standard.
Both interpretations of moral progress are problematic. By defining progress in
terms of the beliefs and convictions that we happen to have, the first interpretation
introduces an element of arbitrariness. The second interpretation is vulnerable to the
same charge, but the arbitrariness now comes in at the level of the chosen standard.
Why should we commit ourselves to the standard in question?
Drawing on recent work in epistemology on infinite regresses, I describe the
outlines of an account of moral progress that does refer to our actual beliefs and
convictions but which is less vulnerable to the charge of arbitrariness. In particular, I
argue that moral progress can be interpreted as the gradual construction of a moral
standard in the face of moral uncertainty.
5
Locating Value in Moral Progress
Keynote Address – June 25th, 14:00
Toni Rønnow-Rasmussen
Lund University
[email protected]
Making moral progress is generally considered to be valuable. However, it is not
obvious what kind of value accrues to moral progress, nor in what way moral progress is
in fact valuable, if it is valuable at all. Just where value should be located in moral progress
turns in part on how the two following questions relate to one another: Is the world
better today than it was in the past? And has the world of today made any moral
progress? This talk consists, then, of two parts. Part one outlines a distinction between a
forward- and a backward-looking sense of moral progress. This distinction serves mainly
two purposes here: first, it suggests there might be two fundamental ways for something
to make moral progress, only one of which seems to be appropriately applicable to
persons; second, the distinction facilitates the discussion in Part 2 of not only some key
differences but also some challenges when it comes to determining why making moral
progress matters.
6
Abstracts papers
(in alphabetical order)
Varieties of Moral Improvement, Or Why Metaethical Constructivism Must
Explain Moral Progress (p. 12)
Caroline T. Arruda, The University of Texas
The Evanescence of Moral Progress (p.15)
Rachelle Bascara, Birbeck College
Ethics and etiquette (p. 17)
Sandy Berkovski, Bilkent University
Pigments of Reality: Moral Cognition, Political Ethics and Linguistic Epistemology
(p. 19)
Matteo Bonotti, Queen’s University Belfast
Yael Peled, McGill University
Incommensurability and Moral Progress (p. 22)
Martijn Boot, Waseda University
Why we can’t do without moral mytho-poesis – an almost-theistic argument in
favor of the possibility of moral progress (p. 23)
Govert Buijs, VU University
Progressing towards justice: the case of whistleblowing (p. 25)
Emanuela Ceva, University of Pavia
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
A Working Definition of Moral Progress (p. 31)
Jeremy Evans, Boston College
The Benefits of Population-level Thinking for Ethics (p. 32)
Mark Fedyk, Mount Allison University
What can we do? Empirical Philosophy (p. 34)
Annemie Halsema, VU University
Evolution and Moral Progress (p. 35)
Julia Hermann, Utrecht University
Moral Progress in Chinese Philosophy: Confucianism, Daoism and Buddhism (p. 36)
Hyun Höchsmann, East China Normal University
A Liberal Theory of Institutional Moral Progress—The Rights-Protection Theory (p.
39)
Hsin-wen Lee, City University of Hong Kong
The Snafu that is Progress (p. 41)
Abigail Klassen, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Moral Progress without Moral Realism (p. 43)
Charlie Kurth, Washington University
Can we improve our emotional apprehension of moral values? (p. 46)
Samuel Lepine, University of Lyon
Supervenient Moral Causation: How Moral Facts Cause Moral Progress (p. 48)
Andres Luco, Nanyang Technology University
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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
Improving Moral Craftmanship by Moral Case Deliberation (p. 53)
Suzanne Metselaar & Guy Widdershoven, VU Medical Center
Moral Progress and the Divine Command Theory: Can the Good become Better? (p.
55)
Annette Mosher, VU University
Levels of Moral Enhancement (p. 57)
Norbert Paulo, University of Salzburg
The concept of moral progress: a Kantian outlook (p. 59)
Elena Parthene, Sorbonne University
Moral Progress and the Reliability of Moral Intuitions (p. 61)
Johnnie Pedersen, Roskilde University
Hume's 'General Sense of Common Interest' and Conditions for Moral Progress (p.
63)
Björn Petersson, University of Lund
Scientific Progress as Moral Progress (p. 64)
Simone Pollo, Sapienza Università di Roma
Progress through Reason? Liberalism’s Contributions to the Idea of Moral Progress
(p. 65)
Dr Vanessa Rampton, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology
The moral progress of an individual (p. 66)
Amber Riaz, Lahore University of Management Sciences
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Dynamism in Legality: The Significance of Human Dignity in International Law (p.
67)
Stephen Riley, Utrecht University
Moral Progress: enhancing justice? (p. 68)
Alexander Rosas, Universidad Nacional de Colombia
Two premisses for assessing moral progress (p. 70)
C. A. Santander, University of Valencia
Moral Progress and Moral Meddling (p. 72)
Nina Scherrer, University of Bern
Individual moral development and moral progress (p. 74)
Anders Schinkel & Doret de Ruyter, VU University Amsterdam
No moral progress without an objective moral ontology (p. 76)
Jaron Schoone, Berlage Lyceum
Moral progress by increased empirical knowledge and real life experience (p. 78)
Thomas Schramme, University of Hamburg
Moral Progress, Moral Plurality, and Mill’s Paradox (p. 79)
Christian Seidel, Friedrich-Alexander Universität
How do we measure people’s Moral Progress? (p. 82)
Sean Sinclair, Leeds University
Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc: Some Benefits of Rationalization (p. 85)
Jesse Summers, Duke University
On Harm as unifying ethical principle (p. 88)
Tanja de Villiers-Botha, Stellenbosch University
Moral Progress and Motivation (p. 90)
Amna Whiston, University of Reading
10
Moral Progress and Moral Ignorance (p. 92)
Jan Willem Wieland, VU University Amsterdam
The Order of Humanity as the Fulcrum of Moral Progress (p. 93)
Anosike Wilson
Progress in History – Hegel Reviewed (p. 95)
Bart Zandvoort, University College Dublin
11
Varieties of Moral Improvement, Or Why Metaethical Constructivism
Must Explain Moral Progress
Caroline T. Arruda
The University of Texas
[email protected]
Among the available metaethical views, it would seem that moral realism—in
particular moral naturalism—must 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 O’Neill 1989; Rawls 1999/1980; Wallace 2010).2
By contrast, those
constructivists who align themselves with moral anti-realism take, to use Sharon Street’s
(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?
Let’s 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).
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., Korsgaard’s view). On this
issue, see Engstrom (2013).
2
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 Korsgaard’s
(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 Bagnoli’s (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 Bagnoli’s constructivism, or constructivism about
practical reason, provides the best means for explaining moral improvement while
Kantian constructivism has the most difficult time doing so.
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The Evanescence of Moral Progress
Rachelle Bascara
Birbeck College
[email protected]
Moral progress is to be measured by the obliteration or reduction of an injustice,
without the same injustice being replicated elsewhere. The conferment of human status
to slaves in Western societies, the permission to pursue education and own properties
to people previously considered unqualified, the introduction of sexual harassment and
anti-discrimination laws are among the historical milestones which have been asserted
as evidence of moral progress. Indeed, in a sense, they are. Such laws could be construed
as the state recognizing a wrong and taking a stand. But sometimes the formal admission
of equality can also function as a means to obscure the lack of moral progress. At worst,
they could provide the appearance of legitimacy to an injustice. They could render valid
an ahistorical and severely skewed distribution of social goods for they encourage the
perception of just deserts.
In this paper, I argue that the removal of overt means of oppression could further
reinforce the same oppression, but in a more insidious way. After the emancipation of
slaves, an underclass of people with no education, no property, no highly marketable
skills were rendered free to participate in the free market of competition. It is like
stabbing someone’s knee, apologizing, and then challenging them to a race. The
acceptance of women into the traditional paid labor force has been repeatedly
championed as an instance of gender progress, whilst there is insufficient
acknowledgment that more affluent women have outsourced their so-called domestic
duties to women of lesser economic and social standing, obscuring the lack of gender
progress in the domestic setting. When laws were introduced prohibiting marital rape
and sexual harassment, we have the impression that women’s interests are being given
sufficient consideration, which renders invisible the strong socio-cultural disincentives
that prevent victims from seeking formal redress from such forms of violence and
mistreatment.
Despite the granting of de jure equality, blatant de facto inequality stubbornly
persists. Despite legal mechanisms for the prevention, eradication, and redress for
gender-based wrongs, cultural norms and conventions contribute to the persistence of
the injustice in a subtler manner. In fact, one could argue that these injustices have taken
on a new and improved facade of legitimacy. If women and ethnic minorities are no
longer formally disqualified from climbing the corporate ladder, then the continued
15
predominance of white men in positions of power must be the result of choice and fair
play. If women are still getting abused and mistreated, they must be choosing to endure
the abuse, for there are laws that could be appealed to for their protection.
However, despite the pitfalls of de jure equality and the inadequacies of legal remedies,
they continue to be indispensable. Though they may have the tendency to obscure and
conceal injustice, formal legislation can pave the path for genuine progress. The
recognition of an injustice and the subsequent preventative or retributive legislation is
still the first step in addressing an injustice. For in order for real moral progress to be
possible, we need to be able to appeal to the ideals and aspirations enshrined in our
laws. I take the case of criminalizing the non-reporting of suspected or known child abuse
as a possible scenario in which we can use the law to generate obligations that invoke
an aspirational and better moral world.
16
Ethics and etiquette
Sandy Berkovski
Bilkent University
[email protected]
It is common to dismiss the moral significance of etiquette. The rules of etiquette
are thought to be arbitrary, not subject to rational command, and generally petty. Here
I want to suggest that these criticisms are premature.
Humans share with animals susceptibility to ‘urges’. Their behaviour can be
causally determined by physiological needs, such as hunger, and by primitive emotions,
such as anger. A fusion of these—partly through habit, partly inherited—is also possible,
whereby people are pulled by complex emotions and desires, such as avarice or fame.
As Elias’ classic study has shown, one chief purpose of etiquette is to bridle human urges
and exercise self-control. Now one might think that the further purpose of this restraint
is purely instrumental. Urges are impediments for smooth interaction. Once they are
removed, interaction can flow smoothly. That this was a historical motive for introducing
etiquette rules, and that it remains a contemporary motive for maintaining them, we do
not have to dispute. But habituation of these rules leads to several effects of obvious
moral significance. One is the softening of human dispositions. Public displays of cruelty
become socially unacceptable. Cruelty may persist in privacy, where etiquette fails to
penetrate. Yet, as it is no longer encouraged, its manifestations are expected to be fewer
and weaker. Secondly, etiquette promotes respect for others. Deliberate insults and
careless disregard for the needs and opinions of others are sneered at. Again, even
though moral inhibitions may have nothing to do with the original motivation for
prohibiting such behaviour, the routine practice of this behaviour cultivates nothing less
than a moral norm of respect. The third effect is the formation of volitional agency.
Instead of succumbing to urges, the agent develops the ability to control them in
accordance with the rules. Control is achieved by selecting which desires and emotions
can be displayed on a public occasion, and in what way. This ability is clearly a
prerequisite for the performance of any moral action. Fourthly, etiquette dictates that no
distinction should be made in the treatment of people on the basis of their qualities. If
anything, strangers should be accorded an even more courteous treatment than the kin.
Sick, disabled, generally queer people should not be made fun of and humiliated. And
so, at least on many occasions, impartiality is encouraged. Of course, all these effects are
at the same time conditions for the continuous practice of the etiquette-based
behaviour.
17
The mere emergence of etiquette and the faithful adherence to its rules do not
create a morally good character. Actions sanctioned by etiquette are not necessarily
morally right. But I submit that no community could recognise and follow these rules for
any protracted period of time, unless it develops and follows a canon of moral norms.
Among the central elements of that canon will be the very same elements I have
numbered. Hence the claim: effects of the behaviour sanctioned by etiquette constitute
a sufficient condition for the gradual emergence of moral norms. The moral significance
of etiquette should, therefore, be appraised dynamically in tracing the evolution of
behaviour. As moral improvement within the community is constituted by the
entrenchment of moral norms, a community that practises etiquette is predicted to have
registered such improvement over a period of time.
I conclude by addressing two outstanding problems. One is the question whether
some codes of etiquette might include rules that are morally repugnant (e.g., those
condoning cruelty and discrimination). I reply that this does not appear to be a logical
possibility. If etiquette is designed to facilitate interaction, it is strange to suppose that
positively immoral rules could achieve this goal. Another question is how terrible
atrocities could be committed by civilised communities, agents that could well follow
rules of etiquette to the letter. Here the response is, once again, that the moral role of
etiquette can only be felt in a process. A sustained practice of etiquette results in
improved moral dispositions within a community over a period of time. I bring up
statistical data from the history of modern England intended to show how the
prominence of etiquette was correlated with the drop in committed atrocities.
18
Pigments of Reality: Moral Cognition, Political Ethics and Linguistic
Epistemology
Matteo Bonotti
Queen’s University Belfast
[email protected]
Yael Peled
McGill University
[email protected]
Is our moral cognition “coloured” by the language(s) that we speak? Surprisingly,
perhaps, despite the crucial significance of language to the human experience and
perception of the world, very few attempts have been made thus far to consider the
possibility of language-based epistemic diversity effects on moral cognition. Within
contemporary normative analytical political theory such an omission is particularly
intriguing, considering the centrality of language to key notions such as deliberative
democracy6, public reason7 and epistemic injustice8. Within the context of normative
political theory, the literature on culturally and linguistically-divers societies seemingly
invites, if not necessitates, closer attention to the possibility of linguistic relativity effects
on the moral perceptions of individuals and groups from diverse backgrounds, origins
and traditions who aim to negotiate political and ethical commonalities.
The possibility of linguistic relativity has traditionally been associated with a
strong definition of the principle, according to which language determines thought. Such
strong interpretation, however, seems to have been more of a straw man than a serious
proposition9. Emerging research across a broad range of disciplines, from linguistic
anthropology to neuroethics, is presently engaged in a detailed and systematic effort to
explore the weak definition of the linguistic relativity principle, according to which
language shapes particular cognitive “habits” or “tendencies”, directing specific attention
at some aspects of the world by codifying specific concepts, such as the Anglo concept
of “fairness”10, the Japanese concept of “wa” (和, “harmony”, “peaceful group
conformity”)11 or Bantu “Ubuntu” (humane-ness”, “the sharing of a universal bond of
6
Kymlicka and Patten, 2003: 14-16.
Rawls, 2005.
8
Fricker, 2007.
9
Gumperz and Levinson, 1992: 33.
10
Wierzbicka, 2006: 141-170.
11
Wierzbicka, 1997: 248-253.
7
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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Lucy, J. A. (1992). Language Diversity and Thoughts: A Reformulation of the
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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.
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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.
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Rawls, J. (2005). Political Liberalism. New York: Columbia University Press.
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Wierzbicka, A. (1997). Understanding Cultures through Their Keywords: English,
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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
[email protected]
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 can’t do without moral mytho-poesis – an almost-theistic
argument in favor of the possibility of moral progress
Govert Buijs
VU University
[email protected]
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 ‘mythopoetic’ 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
[email protected]
The paper contributes to the philosophical discussion of political corruption by
offering an account of those who reveal cases of corruption to the public as agents of
moral progress. Politically corrupt behaviour occurs when people who occupy
institutional roles, entrusted with the public power to implement public rules and operate
public procedures, do in fact bend such rules and procedures in a partisan manner for
the sake of obtaining some undue personal advantage. I clarify the moral wrongness of
this form of corruption as an instance of relational injustice insofar as those who engage
in acts of political corruption disrupt the respectful relations of mutual accountability
that should hold between citizens in a democracy. As a response to this kind of injustice,
I consider the action of whistleblowers and their role in achieving relational justice. I show
that by calling the attention of the public on particular instances of corruption,
whistleblowers play an important communicative function aimed at re-establishing the
interpersonal relations of mutual accountability that corruption disrupts. On this basis, I
suggest viewing their action as a direct contribution to progressing towards justice. I
conclude by drawing from this particular analysis some more general implications on the
role of conscientious law-breaking in bringing about moral progress in society.
25
Cultural moral progress despite biological moral decline? – an empirical
and ethical investigation of the notion of “moral progress”
Eveline Gutzwiller
University of Luzern
[email protected]
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 12’000
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
[email protected]
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 Kuhn’s 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
Iris van Domselaar
University of Amsterdam
[email protected]
‘Wisdom comes through suffering’ is a famous comment made by the chorus in
Aeschylus' tragic play The Oresteia. The phrase succinctly hints to the idea that a
confrontation with a ‘tragic’ situation can lead to moral progress because it often takes
the shock of pain to rightly appreciate the moral bearing of a situation or a choice.
Sure, this idea is straightforwardly at odds with the Platonic tradition in which tragic
situations are understood, if at all, as due to an irrational understanding of moral reality.
Against the background of what can be dubbed the ‘tragic tradition’ in philosophy, I will
(critically) explore the idea that allowing conceptual room for the possibility of tragic
legal choices can spur moral progress within a legal order. The acknowledgment of the
tragic character of legal choices and connected to this the ‘tragic responsive reactions’
that may follow can arguably help to morally 'refresh' a legal order. In case of a tragic
legal choice the ‘drama’ will often be written ‘off court’, in the dialectical process between
all legal and political institutions that are concerned with the realisation of values of
political morality.
In addition the paper will address the question whether this idea can be reconciled
with the generally held requirement of the rule of law that the exercise of state-power
should be bound by rules and in that sense be predictable.
30
A Working Definition of Moral Progress
Jeremy Evans
Boston College
[email protected]
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
[email protected]
Population-level thinking is common in both economics and evolutionary biology.
The thesis of my proposed talk is we can understand both ethical inquiry and ethical
progress at the level of populations, and that, moreover, adopting this level of
description would be extremely fruitful. The benefits include systematic answers to many
philosophical questions about ethical progress. What’s more, these answers are largely
empirical in nature, and so while this means that they may not survive sustained
philosophical or scientific scrutiny, the empirical content of the answers nevertheless
provides a novel subject-matter for philosophical discussions of ethics.
My talk begins from the assumption that knowledge of the causes of good and
bad outcomes is ethical knowledge. After building a few additional concepts and
definitions onto this assumption, I will then present some data indicating that, by
adopting a population-level view of human social behaviour, there are many obvious
examples of ethical knowledge, primarily in the form of knowledge about the effects of
social institutions on the realization of goods and values in different populations. I would
like to present three examples of these population-level analyses of the causes of good
and bad outcomes, both to substantiate my talk’s thesis, but also to demonstrate that
different types of empirical inquiry can produce the relevant relevant ethical insights. An
interesting implication of this is that an empirically adequate account of the causes of
good and bad outcomes at the population level of analysis can be produced only by a
programme of interdisciplinary research, involving researchers from the social and
behavioural sciences as well as the humanities.
I said above that systematic answers to perennial philosophical questions about
ethics are amongst the benefits of population-level thinking in ethics. My talk will
conclude by reviewing some of these answers. For instance, figuring out the cause of a
kind of bad outcome is, somewhat perversely, epistemic progress in ethics, inasmuch as
this knowledge is new ethical knowledge. Metaphysical ethical progress can be made by
producing new good outcomes, or by arresting bad outcomes; yet, knowledge of how
to accomplish either of these kinds of metaphysical ethical progress will consist of more
than just ethical knowledge. This leads to the suggestion that, insofar as we know a great
deal about different kinds of bad outcomes and their causes, we have made a great deal
of epistemic progress. However, because we lack further insight into how to reconfigure
32
the social world to produce better outcomes, we are unable to convert this epistemic
progress into corresponding metaphysical progress. Additionally, evidence that social
institutions are responsible for ethical outcomes supports the conclusion that ethical
progress is (perhaps only) possible in populations that are sufficiently normativelyintegrated so as to allow for the formation of social institutions. And finally, populationlevel thinking about ethical progress allows us to conceptualize ethical truth in a way
that is analogous to how scientific realists conceptualize the (approximate) truth of
mature scientific theories.
Specifically, the viability of population-level thinking in ethics provides the
impetus for defining ethical truth as the increasingly better accommodation of our
representations of the effects of social institutions on populations to the actual causal
dynamics generated by interactions of social institutions and human populations. These
successively better accommodations can, in turn, provide a posteriori evidence that
vindicates the initial philosophical assumptions that are needed in order to explicitly
conceptualize ethical progress and inquiry at the population level-of-analysis.
33
What can we do? Empirical Philosophy
Annemie Halsema
VU University
[email protected]
I will start with claiming that in the context of contemporary continental
philosophy the question whether there is moral progress cannot be answered in a
general sense, but only in a historically and culturally specific one. The idea of moral
progress in the history of philosophy is related to the Enlightenment, with its trust in
human reason and its critical relation to tradition and faith. It also is related to the notion
of critique (Kant). In contemporary continental philosophy, most thinkers have given up
the idea of progress. But what does that imply for philosophy as critique, and in what
respects can we still think in terms of progress?
I will first show that one of the main reasons for contemporary philosophers to
leave the idea of progress behind, is the changed relation of philosophy to the human
sciences. In the 20th century the knowledge privilege of philosophy is relativized because
of the claim to objectivity of the sciences (Habermas), and the claim to knowledge of the
modern subject is relativized because the subject becomes an object of the human
sciences that is constituted in social structures (Foucault).
That being the case, I will argue for a specific notion of philosophy as critique.
With Jürgen Habermas I will claim that philosophy could form an important mediation
between sciences and the Lebenswelt. In contrast to the human sciences that objectify
the life-world and isolate themselves from it because of their expert-knowledge,
philosophy can still relate to this background. Why? Because philosophy reminds us of
the prescientific world in which we relate to things and others, and from which
knowledge is derived.
Yet often enough philosophers seem to abstract from the life world, rather than
relate to it, and as such seem farther away from the life world than the sciences. I will
end with arguing for empirical philosophy as a means of relating to the life world.
Philosophy, in order to relate to the life world should explicitly relate to human
experience, and take into account empirical data. I will illustrate this claim with examples
from a current empirical philosophical project that I partake in. This project implies moral
progress in a contextualized sense: it aims at bringing theories about embodiment closer
to the experience of the women investigated, and therefore to improve medical care.
34
Evolution and Moral Progress
Julia Hermann
Utrecht University
[email protected]
Evolutionary biologists and psychologists have come up with possible
evolutionary explanations of our moral capacities, evaluative tendencies and the content
of our moral judgements. If we assume that at least some of these explanations are
correct, what follows from this assumption for the possibility of moral progress? Does it
make sense to talk about such a thing as moral progress at all, if we assume that our
moral judgements depend on our evolutionary history? Does moral progress mean that
we distance ourselves from our evolved tendencies and capacities and try to overcome
(some of) them through autonomous moral reasoning? Or should we rather conceive of
evolution itself as leading us towards moral progress?
In order to be able to talk about moral progress, it seems necessary that moral
judgements can in principle be justified. For instance, to be able to say that the abolition
of (old forms of) slavery is an instance of (local or partial) moral progress, we must be
able to distinguish between the unjustified judgement that slavery is morally right or
permissible and the justified judgement that it is morally wrong. Yet some philosophers
take evolutionary explanations of our moral sense to imply that moral judgements
cannot be justified.
In my talk, I shall reflect on different ways of understanding moral progress in the
light of evolutionary explanations. Interestingly, it is possible to see a potential for moral
progress in our capacity to critically reflect on our evolved evaluative tendencies and
moral capacities and also in some of these tendencies and capacities themselves, for
example altruistic tendencies. It shall be stressed throughout the talk that evolutionary
hypotheses have no straightforward implications in relation to the possibility of moral
progress. There are several ways of interpreting evolutionary findings, and we have to be
extremely careful when drawing normative and meta-ethical conclusions from them.
35
Moral Progress in Chinese Philosophy: Confucianism, Daoism and
Buddhism
Hyun Höchsmann
East China Normal University
[email protected]
What constitutes moral progress?
At first sight, the three major schools of philosophy in China, Confucianism,
Daoism and Buddhism do not appear to affirm moral progress since it might seem that
they extol moral goals to be derived from past achievements. Confucius (551 - 479 BCE)
upholds the legacy of Zhou dynasty. The Daoist philosophers, Laozi (ca. 604 - 531 BCE)
and Zhuangzi (ca. 369 - 286 BCE) contrast the moral turpitude of the Warring States with
the distant idyllic age of harmony. Buddhism invokes the teachings of the Buddha (560
- 480BCE) to be emulated.
However, we find that there is a consensus on what constitutes moral progress in
Confucian, Daoist and Buddhist ethics. The moral, aesthetic, and political goal of China
is harmony: harmony of the individual, the family, the state, and ultimately with all of
nature.
What are the strategies for achieving moral progress?
Love all men (Analects 12.22).
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.
Are all equally capable of moral progress?
From the point of view moral capacity, equality prevails in Confucian, Daoist, and
Buddhist ethics. They affirm that all are equally capable of moral progress and emphasise
individual responsibility beyond the confines of individual life. Even Xunzi (fl. 298 - 238
BCE), who argued that human nature is prone to evil, uphold that moral progress can be
attained by all through just laws and institutions. Laozi emphasises that the sage does
not have a special moral intuition but shares the mind of the people. Buddhism upholds
that all are endowed with ‘Buddha nature’ and are capable of realising it.
Where is the empirical evidence for moral progress to be found?
What evidence is there that Confucianism, Daoism and Buddhism actually
contributed to moral progress in the history of China? As the three ethical traditions
became established as an integral part of life of all people in China, even as they failed
to live up to the moral exhortation of the philosophers, all emperors knew that if they
were viewed as trampling on the virtues extolled by the philosophers which lay the
foundation of their society, they would forfeit the title by which they occupied the throne.
The recourse to the teachings of the philosophers provided a tendency to check the
violence of the oppression and maintain the self-respect of the people throughout the
long history of China.
While the three ethical traditions present distinct strategies for achieving moral
progress, they are firmly grounded in the empirical domain. The conviction that all
possess moral capacity is argued for in distinct ways and empirical evidence is sought to
support the thesis of equal capacity of all to extend moral concern to alleviate suffering.
In the celebrated example of a child falling into a well, Mencius (371 - 289 BCE) argues
that all will feel compassion and that moral motivation stems from the sympathy and
concern to alleviate distress.
Zhuangzi affirms the way (dao) of moral progress in transcending the boundaries.
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 Progress—The RightsProtection Theory
Hsin-wen Lee
City University of Hong Kong
[email protected]
In this paper, I propose a liberal theory of institutional moral progress—the rights-
protection theory. It is intended to be used to measure the moral value of public
institutions, including constitutions, civil laws, and criminal laws in international and
domestic societies. This theory holds that the moral values of public institutions and
policies are to be measured by the extent to which they protect the fundamental rights
of citizens, including the rights to life, liberty, and property. This theory is a liberal theory
because the moral values of public institutions and policies are determined by their
tendency to preserve individual rights, especially fundamental ones. Other things being
equal, an institutional reform brings moral progress if more fundamental rights of
citizens are secured. On the other hand, if a reform would render fundamental rights
more vulnerable to violation, such a change would be considered a moral regress, even
if it brings about other moral values such as just desert.
To show how the rights-protection theory can be implemented, I first distinguish
between the moral values of different rights. One important principle that this theory
adopts is that the basic rights are more valuable than non-basic ones (Shue, 1980). For
instance, ceteris paribus, the right to life is more valuable than any other rights because
it is the precondition of other rights a citizen can enjoy. Likewise, the right to physical
security is also considered highly valuable. On the other hand, although the right to vote
is valuable, it is not as valuable as the right to life or physical security.
To help the readers see the practical implication of this new theory, I contrast this
theory with other theories of institutional moral progress, including the desert-based
theory. Consider, for instance, the issue of the death penalty. According to desert-based
theories, e.g., retributivism, a society has a strong reason to sustain capital punishment
because it would give deserving criminals their just desert. Retributivists would agree
with abolishment only when the retributivist reason is outweighed by other stronger
reasons. For instance, a desert-based theorist may believe that people deserve to enjoy
the money they earn from their hard work. However, if the financial cost of the death
penalty was too high, it would deprive people of the money they deserve. Only then
would retributivist agree to abolish the death penalty.
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 it—for 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
[email protected]
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 SC’s “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 party’s 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 nonpernicious 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 selfundermining. 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 kindmembership 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
[email protected]
My paper takes up two inter-related questions about moral progress: what is
moral progress and how do we get it? Answering the first question is a project in moral
metaphysics: to understand what moral progress is, we need an account of the moral
reality that we purport to be progressing toward.
Here I argue that looking to the critical practices that our moral discourse
supports (i.e., the forms of error and improvement it involves) indicates that moral reality
is mind-dependent. But if moral facts are mind-dependent, then in what sense does
moral inquiry generate genuine moral progress— doesn’t a mind-dependent moral
reality entails that moral progress is merely matter of making our moral beliefs more
internally consistent (see, e.g., Brink 1989)? Thus, enters the second question— how do
we make moral progress? To answer this question, we need a moral psychology and
epistemology that explains how moral inquiry can generate progress that moves us
beyond just increasing the internal consistency of our moral beliefs. I develop a novel
account of moral inquiry and innovation that can do this.
Part 1: What is Moral Progress?
To address the first question, I build on earlier work 13. I employ a comparative
analysis of the critical practices of our scientific, moral, and fashion discourses in order
to argue that we should see our scientific and fashion discourses as marking the ends of
a spectrum with moral discourse in between.
Intuitively, science supports the robust critical practices tell for the mindindependence of the underlying scientific facts: deep error is possible (i.e., we could
be wrong but never know it), scientific explanations are belief-independent in the
sense that to explain X, we needn’t appeal to our beliefs about X. This indicates that
scientific progress amounts to changes that bring existing beliefs more closely in line
with the mind-independent facts. By contrast, our fashion discourse—our talk of what’s
chic and stylish—supports a much weaker set of critical practices: though individuals
can be wrong about what’s stylish, society as a whole cannot (i.e., no deep error);
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
what’s 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 beliefindependent nor reliant on claims about people’s 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 beliefs—e.g.,
those that survive cognitive psychotherapy (Brandt 1979) or those found at the end of
inquiry (Kitcher 2011).
Part 2: How can we make Moral Progress?
If genuine moral progress is to be possible, there need to be psychological
mechanisms that allow us to do more than just better track existing moral conventions;
there need to be mechanisms that bring convention-transcendent moral innovation.
Recently, Richmond Campbell and Victor Kumar (2012, 2013) have argued that the
needed mechanism is a motivation grounded in our concern to be seen as morally
credible in the eyes of our peers. We are uncomfortable when inconsistencies in our
moral beliefs are made public. Because of this, we revise our beliefs not just in ways that
make them more consistent, but also in ways that are responsive to other potential
objections. It’s this tendency to recognize that our peers might find even our revised
judgments objectionable that engages creative processes that can move us beyond
mere conformity to existing moral conventions.
But the proposal doesn’t work. Drawing on research in psychology regarding
impression management and motivated reasoning, I argue that if the underlying
mechanism of revision is a desire to be seen as morally credible vis-à-vis our peers,
then we don’t get convention-transcendence— for our revisions are driven by a concern
to change our moral judgments so that they better conform to our perception our peer’s
moral beliefs. That is not a mechanism that moves us beyond existing conventions—it’s
a mechanism that perpetuates them.
Once we see this, we see that what’s needed is a psychological mechanism driven
by a concern for accuracy, not peer acceptance. Drawing on earlier work, I argue that
the psychological mechanism we need is a distinctive variety of anxiety—what I call
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 we’re 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
[email protected]
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 (Döring, 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
[email protected]
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 “mindindependent” 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 nonmoral 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 sociohistorical changes associated with moral progress. This is because moral properties are
event-types that are realized by intersubjective relationships of various kinds—i.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 trade—the 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 people’s 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 people’s 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 people’s
voluntary compliance with their norms. During the American Civil War, slavery put the
Confederacy at a competitive disadvantage to the Union. President Lincoln’s decision
to issue the Emancipation Proclamation gave the Union a military edge. Freed slaves
were eager to contribute to the Union’s 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 employees—fortification 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
[email protected]
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, it’s 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 term’s, 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 Wilson’s 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
[email protected]
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.
What’s 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
Suzanne Metselaar, Guy Widdershoven
VU Medical Center
[email protected]
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 Musschenga’s article ‘Empirical ethics and the special place of the practitioner’s
moral judgements,’15 in which he articulates the aforementioned doubt, as our point of
departure.
Underlying Musschenga’s 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
Empirical ethics and the special place of the practitioner’s 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.
15
53
aspects of the job (Parker 2012). We will relate this characteristic of MCD to a prominent
concept in Gadamer’s 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 one’s partner in a
dialogue is not merely a matter of total self-expression and the successful assertion of
one’s 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 MCD’s 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
[email protected]
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 Romania—with their large Orthodox citizenship which sees
homosexuality and teaching homosexuality as a violation of religious ethics—and
states such as the Netherlands, Germany, and Belgium—which 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
[email protected]
Jean-Jacques Rousseau famously declared that the task of political philosophy
is “to consider if … there can be any legitimate and sure principle of government, taking
men as they are and laws as they might be.” The fiercely debated problem whether or
not the enhancement of moral dispositions through biomedical means is desirable has
strong implications for our very understanding of political philosophy and of
democracy in particular. Proponents of moral bioenhancement (MBE)—above all Julian
Savulescu and Ingmar Persson—are about to reverse Rousseau’s feasibility claim. They
argue that, if we want to fight global injustice, to stop climate change, or to minimize
general aggression, we already have a sufficiently settled system of shared moral laws;
what we lack is the right men. That is to say that we take laws as they are and men as
they might be. Proponents of MBE argue that there can be nothing wrong with making
people morally better, e.g. through increased levels of empathy and decreased
tendencies for aggression. Given the current human traits and dispositions there is not
even an alternative to the use of MBE if we want to make the world a better place, or
so they argue.
In this paper I outline the different levels on which MBE is currently discussed.
Most arguments for MBE start from the assumption that every change that helps
people conforming to widely accepted moral rules—and, thus, to show good
behavior—is desirable. Since moral insight and moral motivation tend to contribute to
such conformity, changes in moral insight and moral motivation are desirable. Even on
this simplistic picture, there are at least three levels that deserve attention separately,
insight (or beliefs), motivation, and behavior. Critics of MBE usually do not argue that
MBE could not yield better behavior. They rather claim that this focus on behavior
misses the point of morality since moral behavior implies autonomy and
“freedom to fall.”
There are at least two further levels of MBE that are currently not sufficiently
separated, namely (1) MBE of a consenting individual and (2) MBE as a policy (i.e.
suggested or compulsory MBE). Many proponents of MBE start their arguments by
discussing enhancements of consenting individuals that help them to overcome
dispositions they themselves regard as obstacles to what they really want; the
conclusions, however, often play on the policy level.
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
[email protected]
Moral progress, evident and universal though it may seem, is nevertheless an
idea that has a precise moment of historic emergence : XVIIIth century, the Aufklärung
century, this moment of enthusiasm and faith in technical, intellectual and political
progress, to the point that from these different kinds of progress, assessed by statistics
and concrete results, it has been concluded that there was an overall moral progress.
But, from ones to the other, is the consequence right? Is this passage legitimate? In this
paper, I would like to reconsider the conceptual foundations of this idea, as it has been
thematised by its first designers, and especially by Kant, in order to test its resistance
to facts and history. More precisely, I would like to study the two means that allow an
implementation of moral progress, according to the thinkers of this concept: education,
on the individual level; Law, on the collective level. How does a civilization
progress morally? What should we improve for moral progess to happen on individual
or social scale? Education, first, that is, the process by which a human being is raised
(in every sense of the word) to his real destination, freedom. Indeed, Kant distinguishes
three moments of education (physical, intellectual and moral) and it is important to
understand how in the last moment, through an access to autonomy, the temporality
is no longer that of the phenomena, for which present follows past: the educational
present is not determined by the past, but by the future, thus including the idea of
progress. The establishment of Law, secondly, constitutes the historic mediation aiming
at morality. If history has a rational meaning, it is because it establishes the norms of
Law, which further produce in individuals a habitus, i.e., a familiarisation with law, and
allow them to interiorize it. By forcing me to repress my sensibility (even if through
exterior coercion), Law represents the mediation between nature and freedom. The
profound purpose of Law is to educate people so that they become free and moral
beings. But, how does one move from discipline and training to moral progress ? How
does one move from Law to morality, in spite of the strong distinction all philosophers,
and especially Kant, made between these two fields? Moreover, are these answers
satisfactory -in the light of the last centuries and in the light of the structural
dysfunctions revealed in these fields? My paper propose to address these issues in
order to determine the consistence and the limits of moral progress.
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.
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Moral Progress and the Reliability of Moral Intuitions
Johnnie Pedersen
Roskilde University
[email protected]
In this paper I’m 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 wouldn’t be clear what to look for in
setting out to defend the claim. Thus, I’m 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 people’s moral beliefs are manifested in their
conduct and in the structure of their societies (laws, institutions, etc.). If there wasn’t
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 people’s 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.
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Hume's 'General Sense of Common Interest' and Conditions for Moral
Progress
Björn Petersson
University of Lund
[email protected]
David Hume famously claimed that ”a general sense of common interest”
explains why humans are capable of restricting their own pursuit of individual selfinterest for the benefit of their community, beyond the sacrifices that may be explained
by their natural affections for kins and friends, and without explicit contracts or sanction
systems. He illustrates this claim briefly with co-ordination problems and prisoner’s
dilemma type examples. More recently, Susan Hurley, Raimo Tuomela and others have
in different ways argued that our capacity to act or reason in a distinctively collective
manner may explain successful coordination and cooperation in social choice dilemmas
like Hi-Lo or the Prisoner’s dilemma. I compare these claims and focus some features
that our “sense of common interest” would need to have in order to explain cooperation and co-ordination in cases traditionally considered problematic. These
features may affect the prospects of achieving certain types of moral progress in a
group or community.
63
Scientific Progress as Moral Progress
Simone Pollo
Sapienza Università di Roma
[email protected]
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?
Liberalism’s Contributions to the Idea of Moral Progress
Dr Vanessa Rampton
Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zurich)
[email protected]
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 liberalism’s 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 Kant’s 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
[email protected]
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 person’s 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 can’t 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:
International Law
The Significance of Human Dignity in
Stephen Riley
Utrecht University
[email protected]
‘Human dignity’ is central to a conception of post-Westphalian international law
with humanity, not sovereignty, as its core normative principle. International society
has, on this conception, moved from a state of nature attenuated by contractual selflimitation to a state of normative self-consciousness with a grundnorm or a regulative
idea. Human dignity is, in other words, symbolic of progress in international society’s
self-understanding, even if it is not necessarily symptomatic of an emerging
cosmopolitan legal order.
The intention of the present paper is to argue that even this modest progressive
narrative should be disaggregated into conceptual questions concerning human
dignity and the legality of action, the legality of norm-creation, and the legality of
authority. Legality of action concerns the scope and content of primary and regulative
norms; for instance, human dignity has been used to extend the scope and content of
international criminal regulation despite the danger of ex post facto criminalisation and
punishment. Legality of norm-creation concerns the secondary and constitutive rules
that govern primary rules; for instance, human dignity functions in international legal
fora to make creative, but also unpredictable, decision-making possible. And legality
of authority concerns the recognition of legal personality; for instance, human dignity
has been used to expand the range of rights-bearers and duty-holders beyond those
envisaged by the drafters of the UN Charter. Thus human dignity is certainly associated
with dynamism in legality, but a dynamism that is, from the point of view of justice,
problematic.
What, then, is the significance of human dignity in international law? At best, it
might represent a new concern with policy in the international arena, enriching
normative discourse but displacing legality per se. At worst, it might represent the
absence of an international society capable of projecting itself constructively into the
future: human dignity fills the normative void of international law with the promise of
basic, but transient, obligations. Nonetheless, an antinomy between human dignity
and justice could also be a productive one in challenging the assumption that progress
can be gauged through the creation of new regulative norms. Justice and human
dignity both imply that genuinely constitutional norms are needed in international law.
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Moral Progress: enhancing justice?
Alexander Rosas
Universidad Nacional de Colombia
[email protected]
A classic view in moral philosophy distinguishes perfect from imperfect duties
(Kant) or duties of justice from duties of beneficence (Smith). This distinction has a
direct bearing on the issue of moral progress. It supports the view that moral progress
concerning justice is more urgent than concerning beneficence.
The distinction drawn above is based on a distinction between two types of
morally relevant actions: those that positively hurt someone and those that positively
help someone. Justice prohibits actions of the first type; beneficence prescribes actions
of the second type. This distinction correlates with two additional ones to be drawn,
one in the psychological and one in the legal sphere. Psychologically, justice feels
different than beneficence. As Smith puts it:
…we feel ourselves to be under a stricter obligation to act according to justice,
than agreeably to friendship, charity, or generosity…” (Smith TMS, Pt. II, Sect. ii,
Chap I, parag. 5)
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 Smith’s 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 can’t 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.
69
Two premisses for assessing moral progress
C. A. Santander
University of Valencia
[email protected]
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
[email protected]
Moral progress or improvement, understood as the process in virtue of which
individuals or collectives, such as nations or societies, become morally better – better
that is, with regards to their capacity and competence as (collective) moral agents – is
undeniably desirable: Since morally improved individuals and collectives will be prone
to act in a morally preferable or at least permissible way more frequently, it is
reasonable to assume that they thereby tend to generate morally preferable social,
political, economic, etc. conditions. Thus, moral progress is at least instrumentally
desirable or good. However, even if morally improved individuals or collectives would
not necessarily, or not under any circumstances, tend to produce a morally better
environment – suppose, for example, that the citizens of a nation advance morally for
some reason, but a devious dictator systematically corrupts or compromises their
attempts at instantiating better social, political, etc. conditions –, moral progress could
still be said to occur and to be of value in terms of the morally desirable ideals and
motives that people embrace. Given the both conditional and unconditional desirability
of moral progress as an individual and collective goal, one question that arises is: are
there any restrictions on initiating and assimilating moral progress in individuals or
collectives? And if yes, what exactly justifies these limits? Note that the question is one
of limits on possible ways of pursuing moral progress, not of limits on the spectrum of
moral improvement itself.
In this paper, I argue that a whole type or mode of attempts at moral progress
constitutes a misguided and problematic way of seeking moral progress. My
arguments turn on a minimally normative understanding of what moral improvement
can reasonably comprise, which is nonetheless inclusive of a variety of moral outlooks
and justifications.
I contend that what I refer to as “moral meddling” or simply “moralism”, defined
as any attempt of interfering with the affairs of others for the purpose of their moral
improvement, is wrong for at least two reasons. On the one hand, to interfere with
others’ life in pursuit of their moral betterment is instrumentally irrational, in that it
systematically fails to achieve what it sets out to accomplish: People and collectives
improve morally, when they do, in terms of their increasing competence to identify the
morally right or good by themselves in a variety of changing situations, and by virtue
72
of their growing ability to direct their own behavior accordingly. However, (better)
guidance of one’s own behavior in light of one’s 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, selfcontrol, 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
[email protected]
Doret de Ruyter
VU University Amsterdam
[email protected]
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 person’s 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
[email protected]
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 anyone’s 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 Nazi’s 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 Singer’s 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
[email protected]
Morality is a system of normative practices. As such it is similar to other such
practices, e.g. applying laws or playing games. Quite generally, moral progress might
be understood as a change in the circumstances of a practice so that at least one
important aim of the practice is achieved to a higher degree. For the system of morality
this would arguably call for a perspective on moral improvement in terms of avoidance
of unnecessary harm. Circumstances that prevent more harm imply moral progress. If
we think of the circumstances that might allow such progress, we might realise that the
way we pursue a practice can be improved when we know more. For instance, for a
long time people were wrong about capacities of animals to experience pain or to have
complex states of consciousness. This was one faulty reason not to treat them
adequately, i.e. to make moral errors. To learn empirically about the real capacities of
animals hence led to improved moral practice, i.e. moral progress. Another cause for
progress can be experience: In one sense it is of course necessary to actually experience
harm in order to appreciate it as relevant for normative considerations. In addition, to
make experiences can involve an experience to come to see something as harmful.
Many ways we treat each other were not regarded as harmful for a long time, for
instance looking down at women or patronizing adolescents. But this might change,
hence the circumstances of morality might change. More harm will be prevented when
appreciating the harmfulness of certain practices, so moral progress can be due to
experience.
In general my claim is that moral progress has very little to do with an
improvement in moral outlook or an improvement in moral capacities of people, but
with the circumstances in which we act morally. These circumstances are mainly
determined by empirical findings and experiences.
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Moral Progress, Moral Plurality, and Mill’s Paradox
Christian Seidel
Friedrich-Alexander Universität
[email protected]
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 people’s behaviour and mind-set. So according to SubjectCentred 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 nonconsequentialist 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 Mill’s 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 Mill’s Paradox: Boosting
moral progress will increase conformity, which itself curbs moral progress.
80
After briefly discussing Mill’s 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 “pathrelated 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.
81
How do we measure people’s Moral Progress?
Sean Sinclair
Leeds University
[email protected]
How do we measure an individual's moral progress? Or the progress of a group
of students in an ethics class? Before we can answer that, we must say how to
characterise moral progress. Many philosophers would characterise moral progress in
terms of the theories of Lawrence Kohlberg, and then measure it via James Rest's
Defining Issues Test, which operationalises Kohlberg's constructs. I argue that this is a
mistake. I contend it would be better to rely on an alternative test developed In the
Habermasian "discourse ethics" tradition, based on Joseph Cappella's measure of
argument repertoire.
I argue that although Kohlberg can justly claim to describe the moral
development attributable to rather ordinary processes such as ageing and education,
his account does not appear to capture the changes wrought by improvements in
moral reasoning skills of the kind which produce the very best kind of moral thinking
(at least, as far as philosophers are concerned).
This is most easily seen in the place where philosophers try to produce the very
improvements in question: ethics classes. Here, in some respects, Kohlberg's theory
seems too stringent; in other respects, too inclusive. On its stringency, I argue that
ethics class students may use reasoning from stages below Kohlberg's stage 5 without
this detracting at all from the quality of their contributions. For example, medical
students or business students may be asked to consider dilemmas involving contexts
in which they will have moral obligations deriving from their professional role or their
contractual obligations to their employer. When students appeal to these role-related
obligations without offering any broader justification eg in terms of social contract
theory, they count as using stage 4 thinking rather than stage 5 thinking. Yet this does
not detract at all from the quality of their contribution. An appeal to social contract
theory would distract from the main point. Also on stringency, Gilligan's criticisms of
Kohlberg's theory highlight that the theory would not count any action motivated
simply by care as the best kind of action, morally.
Kohlberg's test is also sometimes too inclusive. A dogmatic Kantian who pays
no attention to alternative considerations or perspectives could thereby count as
relying on the highest stage of thinking, while someone who is sensitive to a range of
conflicting considerations and tries to balance them in the best traditions of moral
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 truthconduciveness 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.
84
Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc: Some Benefits of Rationalization
Jesse Summers
Duke University
[email protected]
Does moral progress occur in response to reasoning? One challenge to this
claim comes from recent psychological work that suggests that our explicit reasoning
may not move us as well or in the ways we think it does. Although we often think we
know our reasons for acting, evidence suggests we’re moved by, among other things,
our emotions, instincts, inclinations, implicit stereotypes, our neurobiology, habits,
reactions, evolutionary pressures, unexamined principles, or just justifications other
than the ones we cite.17 I both fail to notice what motivates me, and cite as reasons
considerations that are motivationally inert.
If that is true, then whatever moral progress happens must not happen by our
reasoning with ourselves about what is best to do. But reasoning with ourselves is the
chief way in which most of us attempt to improve ourselves and others. If the evidence
suggests that all reasoning is rationalization, what hope is there for rational moral
progress?
Some have responded to this evidence by concluding that explicit reasoning is
largely or entirely irrelevant to understanding our actions, and what matters are those
(largely non-rational) features that move us. This response usually overestimates the
significance of the psychological evidence and prematurely denies that explicit
reasoning can cause actions.
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 Kant’s Soul,” in Volume
3: The Neuroscience of Morality: Emotion, Brain Disorders, and Development, ed. Walter SinnottArmstrong (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2007).
Michael S. Gazzaniga, Who’s 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 Audi’s 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 needn’t 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 wealth”—both of which I think are good
reasons—I 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.
87
On Harm as unifying ethical principle
Tanja de Villiers-Botha
Stellenbosch University
[email protected]
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 “There’s 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 people’s
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 people’s 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
88
there shouldn’t 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.
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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.
89
Moral Progress and Motivation
Amna Whiston
University of Reading
[email protected]
The motivational force of a sense of obligation is intrinsically connected to ought
judgements. Given that the empirical evidence suggests that different kinds of
judgements correspond to different emotions, and that emotions have motivational
effects, we have reason to think that the sense of obligation, whilst corresponding
directly to ought judgements, embodies a sui generis moral emotion which grounds
the motive of duty. I argue in this paper that the motive of duty as an appropriate
emotional response to value is a necessary condition for moral progress. Other kinds
of judgements, and subsequently emotions, some of which disguised as ‘moral’, may
be necessary for other kinds of progress, and not necessarily for moral progress. Thus
we need a clear conception of ought judgements and their relation to the moral motive
in order to raise the question about the possibility of moral progress.
I do two things in this paper. First, I present the thesis that the sense of
obligation, as a moral motive, provides an emotional basis for the motivational
structure of an agent who is motivated to do what he believes he ought to do19. I argue
that acting from the motive of duty or obligation is acting from a special kind of
emotion which can be constitutionally distinguished not only from the belief that фing in morally obligatory20 but also from desires21, and that the so conceived
‘emotional’ account of the sense of obligation enunciates a worthy alternative to the
traditional belief-desire model of moral motivation and action explanation. One distinct
disadvantage of a common tendency to subsume the sense of obligation under either
the relevant belief or under the classification of typically Humean passions is that such
attempts undermine the practical role of the moral motive understood as a moral
emotion and a complex cognitive-motivational state which allows the possibility of
moral progress by allowing the possibility of appropriately motivational moral
knowledge.
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 ф-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.
90
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 agent’s
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.
91
Moral Progress and Moral Ignorance
Jan Willem Wieland
VU University Amsterdam
[email protected]
We might know more about the moral facts than before. We didn’t 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 doesn’t 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 people’s suffering … speaks ill of
the agent’s 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, I’ll 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
[email protected]
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 order—that
unifying condition—which 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—
virtuous—are 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
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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
[email protected]
Hegel's philosophy of history has often been criticized for its supposedly naïve
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
G.W.F. Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of World History, trans. H.B. Nisbet (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1975).
22
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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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