However, it seems likely to me that a part of the recent improvements you quote were highly linked to the industrial revolution, and that moral progress alone wasn’t enough to trigger that. It’s easier to get rid of slaves when you have machines replacing manual labour at a cheap price.
Same for feminism—I recently attended to a conference in French titled “Will feminism survive a collapse?”. It pointed out that mechanization, better medicine and lower child mortality greatly helped femininism. A lot of women went into the worksplace, in factories and in universities because a lot a time previously allocated to household chores and child rearing was freed up.
It says that slavery often had a minor significance in most societies. It usually had nothing to do with ethics but rather that slavery is not an efficient economic system. Rome or Southern US are rather rare cases. Of course, it’s more complicated than that. Rome could acquire a lot of slaves and treat them in a worse way while it invaded a lot of territory (and acquired a lot of slaves).
Well, in my view the vast majority of moral progress has been triggered by material improvements.
What else could it be? We are not doing moralistic eugenics, are we?
In fact, moral progress is not based on some kind of altruistic impulses, but in the development of reciprocity schemes (often based on punishments) that imply evolutionary (often in geopolitical/economic competition space) advantages.
I agree with that—but I still don’t see why this implies that humans will give a lot of moral value towards animals.
So far, material improvements have worsened the conditions of farmed animals—as a lot of factory farming is not the result of a biological necessity, but is rather done for personal taste. This seems like regress, not progress.
So I don’t see why, given the current trajectory, moralization would end up including animals.
I’m highly suspicious about this “logical” factor. Humans don’t always do logical things—just a look at the existence of fast fashion should be enough to be sure of that.
Hmm, ok, I can get that.
However, it seems likely to me that a part of the recent improvements you quote were highly linked to the industrial revolution, and that moral progress alone wasn’t enough to trigger that. It’s easier to get rid of slaves when you have machines replacing manual labour at a cheap price.
Same for feminism—I recently attended to a conference in French titled “Will feminism survive a collapse?”. It pointed out that mechanization, better medicine and lower child mortality greatly helped femininism. A lot of women went into the worksplace, in factories and in universities because a lot a time previously allocated to household chores and child rearing was freed up.
Of course, people figthing for better rights and values did play an important role. But moral progress wasn’t enough by itself. Technology changed a lot of things. And access to energy that is not guaranteed: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/wXzc75txE5hbHqYug/the-great-energy-descent-short-version-an-important-thing-ea
For animals, technology with alternative proteins could help, but that’s far from certain: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/bfdc3MpsYEfDdvgtP/why-the-expected-numbers-of-farmed-animals-in-the-far-future.
So I’m not convinced that we’ll inevitably have moral progress in the future.
On the topic of slavery, see this paper : https://slatestarcodex.com/Stuff/manumission.pdf
It says that slavery often had a minor significance in most societies. It usually had nothing to do with ethics but rather that slavery is not an efficient economic system. Rome or Southern US are rather rare cases. Of course, it’s more complicated than that. Rome could acquire a lot of slaves and treat them in a worse way while it invaded a lot of territory (and acquired a lot of slaves).
Well, in my view the vast majority of moral progress has been triggered by material improvements.
What else could it be? We are not doing moralistic eugenics, are we?
In fact, moral progress is not based on some kind of altruistic impulses, but in the development of reciprocity schemes (often based on punishments) that imply evolutionary (often in geopolitical/economic competition space) advantages.
I agree with that—but I still don’t see why this implies that humans will give a lot of moral value towards animals.
So far, material improvements have worsened the conditions of farmed animals—as a lot of factory farming is not the result of a biological necessity, but is rather done for personal taste. This seems like regress, not progress.
So I don’t see why, given the current trajectory, moralization would end up including animals.
Because it is logical and probably it will be relatively cheaper as long as we become richer.
I think this is hopeful but not very inspiring argument …
I’m highly suspicious about this “logical” factor. Humans don’t always do logical things—just a look at the existence of fast fashion should be enough to be sure of that.
For the “alternative proteins will be cheaper”, I fear that’s not enough. See this post about why such a position is pretty optimistic : https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/bfdc3MpsYEfDdvgtP/why-the-expected-numbers-of-farmed-animals-in-the-far-future.