Another partial explanation is that (putatively) as people get richer and happier and wiser and so forth, they just have more time and interest and mental/emotional capacity to think carefully about ethics and act accordingly. I’m not sure how much the psychological literature supports this, but e.g. even just ending the worst privations and abuses in childhood probably removes a lot of the left tail of morality, thus increasing the average. And so, if this is significantly right, as material and social progress continues, we will get some moral progress for free as well. I note your point in 2.3.2 that there isn’t much correlation between wealth and charitable giving currently, which does seem evidence against my hypothesis. But richer people care more about ‘post-material’ issues in politics, and intuitively I still think there is some correlation between how well-off you are (broadly construed, not just wealth) and your interest in abstract ethics. But I agree this probably isn’t enough by itself to get everyone to converge to the correct values.
Another thought on why we might continue to see moral progress: Most people don’t care about discovering moral truths or seeking out the Good de dicto, and will just go along with the bare minimum of ethics required by polite society. But some people do actively seek the Good, and they will influence the rest of the population by osmosis over many generations. Even a slow steady tug in the right direction is enough to turn a massive oil tanker, ie collective human morality, in this analogy. But this crucially relies on some people seeking and having access to (upon reflection) the Good, which is not obvious. Note this is distinct from moral trade; it is more moral persuasion.
as people get richer and happier and wiser and so forth, they just have more time and interest and mental/emotional capacity to think carefully about ethics and act accordingly
I think that’s right as far as it goes, but it’s worth considering the limiting behaviour with wealth, which is (as the ultra-wealthy show) presumably that the activity of thinking about ethics still competes with other “leisure time” activities, and behaviour is still sensitive to non-moral incentives like through social competition. But also note that the ways in which it becomes cheaper to help others as society gets richer are going to tend to be the ways in which it becomes cheaper for others to help themselves (or ways in which people’s lives just get better without much altruism). That’s not always true, like in the case of animals.
Good point about persuasion. I guess one way of saying that back, is that (i) if the “right” or just “less bad” moral views are on average the most persuasive views, and (ii) at least some people are generating them, then they will win out. One worry is that (i) isn’t true, because other bad views are more memetically fit, even in a society of people with access to very good abstract reasoning abilities.
Yeah good point that memetic fitness != moral truth. I suppose one could hope that as long as some people are pursuing moral truth, then even if truth and fitness are uncorrelated, that will be some push towards truth, even though there is a lot of drift/noise from random ideas being fit.
The bad case is if truth and fitness are anticorrelated for some reason. My guess is that is unlikely though? Except insofar as the moral truth ends up being really convoluted and abstruse, and then simpler ideas might be more fit. But even then, maybe the memetically fitter simple ideas (e.g. total utilitarianism?) might be close approximations of some really messy truth.
Moral progress
Another partial explanation is that (putatively) as people get richer and happier and wiser and so forth, they just have more time and interest and mental/emotional capacity to think carefully about ethics and act accordingly. I’m not sure how much the psychological literature supports this, but e.g. even just ending the worst privations and abuses in childhood probably removes a lot of the left tail of morality, thus increasing the average. And so, if this is significantly right, as material and social progress continues, we will get some moral progress for free as well. I note your point in 2.3.2 that there isn’t much correlation between wealth and charitable giving currently, which does seem evidence against my hypothesis. But richer people care more about ‘post-material’ issues in politics, and intuitively I still think there is some correlation between how well-off you are (broadly construed, not just wealth) and your interest in abstract ethics. But I agree this probably isn’t enough by itself to get everyone to converge to the correct values.
Another thought on why we might continue to see moral progress: Most people don’t care about discovering moral truths or seeking out the Good de dicto, and will just go along with the bare minimum of ethics required by polite society. But some people do actively seek the Good, and they will influence the rest of the population by osmosis over many generations. Even a slow steady tug in the right direction is enough to turn a massive oil tanker, ie collective human morality, in this analogy. But this crucially relies on some people seeking and having access to (upon reflection) the Good, which is not obvious. Note this is distinct from moral trade; it is more moral persuasion.
I think that’s right as far as it goes, but it’s worth considering the limiting behaviour with wealth, which is (as the ultra-wealthy show) presumably that the activity of thinking about ethics still competes with other “leisure time” activities, and behaviour is still sensitive to non-moral incentives like through social competition. But also note that the ways in which it becomes cheaper to help others as society gets richer are going to tend to be the ways in which it becomes cheaper for others to help themselves (or ways in which people’s lives just get better without much altruism). That’s not always true, like in the case of animals.
Good point about persuasion. I guess one way of saying that back, is that (i) if the “right” or just “less bad” moral views are on average the most persuasive views, and (ii) at least some people are generating them, then they will win out. One worry is that (i) isn’t true, because other bad views are more memetically fit, even in a society of people with access to very good abstract reasoning abilities.
Yeah good point that memetic fitness != moral truth. I suppose one could hope that as long as some people are pursuing moral truth, then even if truth and fitness are uncorrelated, that will be some push towards truth, even though there is a lot of drift/noise from random ideas being fit.
The bad case is if truth and fitness are anticorrelated for some reason. My guess is that is unlikely though? Except insofar as the moral truth ends up being really convoluted and abstruse, and then simpler ideas might be more fit. But even then, maybe the memetically fitter simple ideas (e.g. total utilitarianism?) might be close approximations of some really messy truth.