across the board the ethical trend has been an extension of rights, franchise, and dignity to widening circles of humans
I have two objections here. 1) If this is the historical backing for wanting to future-proof ethics, shouldn’t we just do the extrapolation from there directly instead of thing about systematizing ethics? In other words, just extent rights to all humans now and be done with it. 2) The idea that the ethical trend has been a monotonic widening is a bit self-fulfilling, since we don’t no longer consider some agents to be morally important. I.e. the moral circle has narrowed to exclude ancestors, ghosts, animal worship, etc. See Gwern’s argument here: https://www.gwern.net/The-Narrowing-Circle
I’m not totally sure what #1 means. But it doesn’t seem like an argument against privileging future ethics over today’s ethics.
I view #2 as very much an argument in favor of privileging future ethics. We don’t give moral weight to ghosts and ancestors anymore because we have improved our understanding of the world and no longer view these entities as having consciousness or agency. Insofar as we live in a world that requires tradeoffs, it would be actively immoral to give weight to a ghost’s wellbeing when making a moral decision.
I have two objections here.
1) If this is the historical backing for wanting to future-proof ethics, shouldn’t we just do the extrapolation from there directly instead of thing about systematizing ethics? In other words, just extent rights to all humans now and be done with it.
2) The idea that the ethical trend has been a monotonic widening is a bit self-fulfilling, since we don’t no longer consider some agents to be morally important. I.e. the moral circle has narrowed to exclude ancestors, ghosts, animal worship, etc. See Gwern’s argument here:
https://www.gwern.net/The-Narrowing-Circle
I’m not totally sure what #1 means. But it doesn’t seem like an argument against privileging future ethics over today’s ethics.
I view #2 as very much an argument in favor of privileging future ethics. We don’t give moral weight to ghosts and ancestors anymore because we have improved our understanding of the world and no longer view these entities as having consciousness or agency. Insofar as we live in a world that requires tradeoffs, it would be actively immoral to give weight to a ghost’s wellbeing when making a moral decision.