A standard argument for the stepping stone approach is the effect on people’s moral formation. If I think animal suffering doesn’t matter and eating animals is fine, and then society moves to practices that are more consistent with a view where animal suffering does matter and we’re trying to minimize it, I might change my view. Or if I grew up in such a society I might have formed different views.
I’m skeptical of people’s ability to predict moral views like this, especially off the cuff in a quick survey. For example, I think if in 2000 you had polled Americans on “how do you feel about gay couples adopting children” and “if gay marriage were legal and being gay was widely accepted, how would you feel about married gay couples adopting children” they would have given similarly negative evaluations in both cases. But as the world became more accepting of gay people in general views on gay adoption generally got much more positive. (Both in terms of individual people changing their views and newer generations being more accepting). If you could find historical cases where people were polled on moral hypotheticals that later became true you could test this method
A standard argument for the stepping stone approach is the effect on people’s moral formation. If I think animal suffering doesn’t matter and eating animals is fine, and then society moves to practices that are more consistent with a view where animal suffering does matter and we’re trying to minimize it, I might change my view. Or if I grew up in such a society I might have formed different views.
I’m skeptical of people’s ability to predict moral views like this, especially off the cuff in a quick survey. For example, I think if in 2000 you had polled Americans on “how do you feel about gay couples adopting children” and “if gay marriage were legal and being gay was widely accepted, how would you feel about married gay couples adopting children” they would have given similarly negative evaluations in both cases. But as the world became more accepting of gay people in general views on gay adoption generally got much more positive. (Both in terms of individual people changing their views and newer generations being more accepting). If you could find historical cases where people were polled on moral hypotheticals that later became true you could test this method
fully agree, one of the many limitations of using a survey to test the stepping stone model.