On Locating Value in Making Moral Progress

Metaphilosophy, 1999

This paper shows that moral progress is a substantive and plausible idea. Moral progress in belief involves deepening our grasp of existing moral concepts, while moral progress in practices involves realizing deepened moral understandings in behavior or social institutions. Moral insights could not be assimilated or widely disseminated if they involved devising and applying totally new moral concepts. Thus, it is argued, moral failures of past societies cannot be explained by appeal to ignorance of new moral ideas, but must be understood as resulting from refusals to subject social practices to critical scrutiny. Moral philosophy is not the main vehicle for disseminating morally progressive insights, though it has an important role in processes that lead to moral progress. Yet we have grounds for cautious optimism, since progressive moral insights can be disseminated and can, sometimes, have constructive social effects.

Human Rights, 2013

Philosophy Compass, 2021

Societies change over time. Chattel slavery and foot-binding have been abolished, democracy has become increasingly widespread, gay rights have become established in some countries, and the animal rights movement continues to gain momentum. Do these changes count as moral progress? Is there such a thing? If so, how should we understand it? These questions have been receiving increasing attention from philosophers, psychologists, biologists, and sociologists in recent decades. This survey provides a systematic account of recent developments in the understanding of moral progress. We outline the concept of moral progress and describe the different types of moral progress identified in the literature. We review the normative criteria that have been used in judging whether various developments count as morally progressive or not. We discuss the prospects of moral progress in the face of challenges that claim that moral progress is not psychologically possible for human beings, and we explore the metaethical implications of moral progress.

Both moral realists and anti-realists say that they can embrace moral progress in the sense that our moral views can make some progress. It is unclear whether both sides can hold such a view due to the lack of a defensible account of moral progress. Given this state of affairs, I shall attempt to take some steps toward resolving this issue by developing an account of moral progress. I shall motivate what I call the epistemic account of moral progress. According to this account, one"s moral views make progress if and only if successive moral views gain more epistemic goods. I shall argue that the epistemic account should be preferred to other rival accounts of moral progress. For this purpose, I first exhibit some examples which are good candidates for moral progress. Second, I shall examine two accounts of moral progress which potentially explain why these examples can be taken as moral progress though I ultimately reject these accounts. Third, I propose the epistemic account of moral progress as the account which is preferred to the two rival accounts.

Yearbook for Eastern and Western Philosophy, 2020

2021

Baler is using a form of shorthand. Fully spelled out, for example, "such actions have no moral worth" means "the agent would acquire no moral worth in performing such actions". 10 Utilitarianism Utilitarianism provides the second major "target" of this thesis. My remarks here will be schematic and will be developed in later chapters. I take it that, in any case, the utilitarian position, in essentials, is well known and so does not need extensive exposition. There are a variety of utilitarian views current, some per¬ haps with more right to the title "utilitarian" than others. Firstly, there is trait-Utilitarianism. On this view moral worth or excellence consists in the possession and exercise of certain traits or characteristics, which traits and characteristics are admirable because they are useful to their possessors and/or to society as a whole: the traits are valued because of their consequences, their utility. An important classical exponent of such a view is Hume. Secondly, there is rule or code-Utilitarianism. Moral worth, to the rule-utilitarian, consists in obeying those rules or that code, the prevalence of which in a society may be justified on utilitarian grounds. Finally, there is what I think is the "mainstream" utilitarian view, act-Utilitarianism. This would see moral excellence as consisting in the choice and implementation of the most felicific of the alternatives open to the agent on each occasion (which might, of course, involve the cultivation of certain traits, etc.). The act-utilitarian theory differs from the other two views in that each act the morally excellent person performs is admired because it is the most felicific of the alternatives, whereas the appeal to utility in the other two cases takes place at one remove: the admirable action expresses a trait or is an instance of obedience to a rule which trait or rule is justified by its utility. These utilitarian accounts of moral worth share some major assumptions with the legalist view^fwill now outline. For in as much as these assumptions can be undermined, support for both the legalist '♦3 CHAPTER 5 MERCY AND FORGIVENESS

This paper argues that we can acknowledge the existence of moral truths and moral progress without being committed to moral realism. Rather than defending this claim through the more familiar route of the attempted analysis of the ontological commitments of moral claims, I show how moral belief change for the better shares certain features with theoretical progress in the natural sciences. Proponents of the better theory are able to convince their peers that it is formally and empirically superior to its rivals, and the better theory may be promoted to the status of the truth. Yet there is no 'decision-procedure' for ethics any more than there is for molecular biology. The betterness of true theories can be grasped through what I term 'undirectional narratives' of progress. And while there are true moral claims and perhaps numerous moral truths yet to be discovered, we should reject currently popular forms of moral realism with bivalence. Some moral claims lend themselves to the construction of fully reversible, bi-directional narratives and are likely neither true nor false.

2019

The current predominant conception of human rights implies that human beings have objective intrinsic value. In this paper, we defend that there is no satisfactory justification of this claim. In spite of the great variety of theories aimed at explaining objective intrinsic value, all of them share one common problematic feature: they pass from a non-evaluative proposition to an evaluative proposition by asserting that a certain entity has intrinsic value in virtue of having certain non-evaluative features. This is a step that cannot be justified. In light of this negative result, we offer a radically different approach to intrinsic value. Our proposal reinterprets the claim that human beings have intrinsic value in terms of a commitment to value human beings intrinsically. This commitment provides both objective practical reasons for, and a rational explanation of, efforts aimed at defending and promoting human rights, without need to appeal to the existence of objective intrinsic ...

Ethical Theory and Moral Practice, 2016

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 is 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? In this article we analyze the concept of moral progress to shed light on the psychology of moral development and vice versa; these analyses are found to be mutually supportive. We suggest that: moral progress should be conceived of as development that is evaluated positively on the basis of relatively stable moral criteria that are the fruit and the subject of an ongoing conversation; moral progress does not imply the idea of an end-state; individual moral progress is best conceived of as the development of various components of moral functioning and their robust integration in a person's identity; both children and adults can progress morally-even though we would probably not speak in terms of progress in the case of children-but adults' moral progress is both more hard-won and to a greater extent a personal project rather than a collective effort.