Exchange On The Idea Of Moral Progress

 L:

Since I'm skeptical of the whole idea/phenomenon of moral progress, I've give it some thought and here are some results, which I thought I might as well put in an email, for what it's worth:   

Thing is, I think there are two separate things going on: 

On the one hand, there's a pendulum-like back and forth between an "improving" movement in one direction that passes a point of equilibrium, which then builds up opposition or reaction, which becomes a counter-movement, sending the moral pendulum back, but which then goes beyond equilibrium in turn, generating opposition, and so on -- most evident in sexual issues, but it's there in other matters too.

But then, on the other hand, the point of equilibrium itself moves, and this is what often appears as moral progress, on longer time scales. But I think this is a kind of modern, or, as I've said, Whiggish, illusion produced by the relative material plenty that the continuing industrial/technological revolution has brought. 

Suppose, for example, we think of moral ideas and behaviors as on a spectrum, from tough-minded to weak-minded, with variations more or less synonymous: hard-headed to soft-headed, e.g., even bloody-minded to weepy-minded. We all occupy our positions on such a spectrum, as do cultural averages, and from that position, the further ends of the spectrum will appear morally questionable, or worse -- too far in the tough-minded end will appear morally wrong, bad, and ultimately evil; too far in the weak-minded end will appear morally frivolous, silly, or ultimately laughable. 

But I think those positions (i.e., the moral equilibrium point) will move depending on material circumstances -- hard circumstances will favor hard-headedness, while easier circumstances will allow space for "softer" moral concerns. 

And since this applies not just to individuals but to groups and whole societies and cultures, I think this accounts for why and how equilibrium points move -- thus generating the appearance of moral progress, which is just a shift in moral concerns from what once seemed weak-minded to what now seems relevant. But notice that there's no inherent superiority of one end of that moral spectrum over the other -- both are judged only relative to the equilibrium point at any one time. 

And that point shifts only according to material circumstances -- should they worsen, for example, then what the culture considers a moral equilibrium will shift back, toward harder moral judgments. 

Or so goes the argument.

Me:

I’m thinking about the idea of moral progress differently than you.

My sense of it is that we need to start from the idea of human betterment, as in materially improving people’s lives. In broad contour I think that in a fundamental  sense material progress goes hand in hand with moral progress, understood as making human lives at the most basic levels more humanely livable.

So, for examples, there’s this set of problems: (https://ourworldindata.org/problems-and-progress):

• Every year 300,000 women die from pregnancy-related causes, this means that on any average day 830 mothers die
• The majority of the world – 65% – lives on less than $10 per day.
• And almost 10% live in ‘extreme poverty’, they live on less than $1.90 per day. 
• The world deforested 47 million hectares of forest in the last decade, that’s an area the size of Sweden.
• 60 million children of primary school age are not in school.
• Almost a quarter of the world population – 23% – live in autocratic regimes.
• 14% of the world’s adults do not know how to read and write.
• And 3.7% of all children die before they are five years old. This means that 5.2 million children every year and on any average day the world sees 14,200 child deaths.

and then these improved numbers:

• The number of women who die from pregnancy-related causes declined from 530,000 women in 1990 to 300,000 per year
• The share living in extreme poverty fell from 21% to less than 10% in the last decade – the share living on more than $10 per day increased from a quarter to a third.
• Global deforestation declined three-fold – from 151 million hectares in the 1980s to 47 million hectares in the 2010s.
• The number of primary school age children who are not in school almost halved from over 110 million in the mid-1990s to 60 million.
• The share of the world living in autocratic regimes declined from 45% in the 1980s to 23%.
• The share of the world’s adults who learned how to read and write increased from 70% in 1980 to 86% today.
• And the share of children who died before they were five years old declined from 9.3% in 1990 to 3.7% – the count fell from 12.5 million dead children per year to 5.2 million.

It’s Pinker’s thesis that over time, even though it’s contingent, not teleologically dictated, variable, with steps backwards, with wholesale failure at all times looking at us, on a whole host of significant indices, we are making general progress. (He reports he didn’t start his book, …Better Angels…,—haven’t read it—with this idea in mind, but, rather, his open minded examination of the data on these indices drove his thesis.) 

I understand the divide between morality where there scarcity and backwardness imperil, degrade and destroy  life itself and where all kinds of plenitude raise second order moral problems. But even amidst plenty there are foundational material problems for which basic morality inheres in their amelioration if not solution. For individual flourishing needs some threshold degree of safety and material provision even as that threshold is indeterminate and subject to relative comparisons given particular societies. 

Even when moral concern isn’t strictly tied to safety and material provision, there are moral lines that go forward rather than swing back and forth.

My sense is they proceed from certain (perhaps) axiomatic moral principles like liberty, equality, individuals’ dignity, basic (innate?) individual rights and freedoms, and justice itself as brought conceptually down to earth by notions of rule of law, due process and space between state and citizen. 

Which isn’t to say knotty, perhaps intractable, problems won’t always be with us when these principles or aspects of them conflict with each other; and here is where the pendulum idea makes sense. 

But the forward going lines seem to me to be apparent in the progress of self evident achievements of true social justice such as for, two examples, enfranchising classes of disenfranchised citizens and extending equal rights to classes of people denied them on irrelevant grounds.