From the perspective of a conservative Christian born hundreds of years ago, maybe today’s society is very sinful.
We don’t have to argue about Christians born hundreds of years ago; I know that conservative Christians today also think today’s society is very sinful.
This example isn’t compelling to me, because as an inherently theistic religion, conservative Christianity seems fundamentally flawed to me in its understanding of empirical facts. But we could easily replace conservative Christianity in this example with more secular ancient philosophies, such as Confucianism, Jainism, or Buddhism, abstracting away the components that involve belief in the supernatural. It seems to me that these people would still perceive our society’s moral beliefs as in a state of severe moral decline.
We see moral progress over time simply because over time, morals have shifted closer to our own. But conversely, people in the past would see morals declining over time. I think we should expect future evolutions in morality to likewise be viewed by present-day people as moral decline. This undercuts much of the intuitive appeal of future-proof ethics, though I believe it is still worthwhile to aspire to.
We don’t have to argue about Christians born hundreds of years ago; I know that conservative Christians today also think today’s society is very sinful.
This example isn’t compelling to me, because as an inherently theistic religion, conservative Christianity seems fundamentally flawed to me in its understanding of empirical facts. But we could easily replace conservative Christianity in this example with more secular ancient philosophies, such as Confucianism, Jainism, or Buddhism, abstracting away the components that involve belief in the supernatural. It seems to me that these people would still perceive our society’s moral beliefs as in a state of severe moral decline.
We see moral progress over time simply because over time, morals have shifted closer to our own. But conversely, people in the past would see morals declining over time. I think we should expect future evolutions in morality to likewise be viewed by present-day people as moral decline. This undercuts much of the intuitive appeal of future-proof ethics, though I believe it is still worthwhile to aspire to.