I don’t think the view that moral philosophers had a positive influence on moral developments in history is a simple model of ‘everyone makes a mistake, moral philosopher points out the mistake and convinces people, everyone changes their minds’. I think that what Bykvist, Ord and MacAskill were getting at is that these people gave history a shove at the right moment.
At the very least, it doesn’t seem that discovering the correct moral view is sufficient for achieving moral progress in actuality.
I have no doubt that they’d agree with you about this. But if we all accept this claim, there are two further models we could look at.
One is a model where changing economic circumstances influence what moral views it is feasible to act on, but progress in moral knowledge still affects what we choose to do, given the constraints of our economic circumstances.
The other is a model where economics determines everything and the moral views we hold are an epiphenomenon blown about by these conditions (note this is very similar to some Marxist views of history). Your view is that ‘the two are totally decoupled’, but at most your examples just show that the two are decoupled somewhat, not that moral reasoning has no effect. And there are plenty of examples that show explicit moral reasoning having at least some effect on events—see Bykvist, Ord and MacAskill’s original list.
The strawman view that moral advances determine everything is not what’s being proposed by Bykvist, Ord and MacAskill, it’s the mixed view that ideas influence things within the realm of what’s possible.
I don’t think the view that moral philosophers had a positive influence on moral developments in history is a simple model of ‘everyone makes a mistake, moral philosopher points out the mistake and convinces people, everyone changes their minds’. I think that what Bykvist, Ord and MacAskill were getting at is that these people gave history a shove at the right moment.
I have no doubt that they’d agree with you about this. But if we all accept this claim, there are two further models we could look at.
One is a model where changing economic circumstances influence what moral views it is feasible to act on, but progress in moral knowledge still affects what we choose to do, given the constraints of our economic circumstances.
The other is a model where economics determines everything and the moral views we hold are an epiphenomenon blown about by these conditions (note this is very similar to some Marxist views of history). Your view is that ‘the two are totally decoupled’, but at most your examples just show that the two are decoupled somewhat, not that moral reasoning has no effect. And there are plenty of examples that show explicit moral reasoning having at least some effect on events—see Bykvist, Ord and MacAskill’s original list.
The strawman view that moral advances determine everything is not what’s being proposed by Bykvist, Ord and MacAskill, it’s the mixed view that ideas influence things within the realm of what’s possible.
Thanks, this is a good comment.