Curious what people think of Gwern Branwen’s take that our moral circle has historically narrowed as well, not just expanded (so contra Singer), so we should probably just call it a shifting circle. His summary:
The “expanding circle” historical thesis ignores all instances in which modern ethics narrowed the set of beings to be morally regarded, often backing its exclusion by asserting their non-existence, and thus assumes its conclusion: where the circle is expanded, it’s highlighted as moral ‘progress’, and where it is narrowed, what is outside is simply defined away.
When one compares modern with ancient society, the religious differences are striking: almost every single supernatural entity (place, personage, or force) has been excluded from the circle of moral concern, where they used to be huge parts of the circle and one could almost say the entire circle. Further examples include estates, houses, fetuses, prisoners, and graves.
(I admittedly don’t find his examples all that persuasive, probably because I’m already biased to only consider beings that can feel pleasure and suffering.)
What’s the “so what”? Gwern:
One of the most difficult aspects of any theory of moral progress is explaining why moral progress happens when it does, in such apparently random non-linear jumps. (Historical economics has a similar problem with the Industrial Revolution & Great Divergence.) These jumps do not seem to correspond to simply how many philosophers are thinking about ethics.
As we have already seen, the straightforward picture of ever more inclusive ethics relies on cherry-picking if it covers more than, say, the past 5 centuries; and if we are honest enough to say that moral progress isn’t clear before then, we face the new question of explaining why things changed then and not at any point previous in the 2500 years of Western philosophy, which included many great figures who worked hard on moral philosophy such as Plato or Aristotle.
It is also troubling how much morality & religion seems to be correlated with biological factors. Even if we do not go as far as Julian Jaynes’s9 theories of gods as auditory hallucinations, there are still many curious correlations floating around.
Curious what people think of Gwern Branwen’s take that our moral circle has historically narrowed as well, not just expanded (so contra Singer), so we should probably just call it a shifting circle. His summary:
(I admittedly don’t find his examples all that persuasive, probably because I’m already biased to only consider beings that can feel pleasure and suffering.)
What’s the “so what”? Gwern:
Hi Mo. I’m unsure if you’ve seen it, but Gwern’s article was discussed here.
I hadn’t, thanks for the pointer Pablo.