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ciphergoth comments on Savulescu: "Genetically enhance humanity or face extinction" - Less Wrong
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If we model morality as a one-dimensional scale and change as a random walk, then what you say is true. However, if we model it as a million-dimensional scale on which each step affects only one dimension, after a thousand steps we would expect to find that nearly every step brought us closer to our current position.
EDIT: simulation seems to indicate I'm wrong about this. Will investigate further. EDIT: it was a bug in the simulation. Numpy code available on request.
I would regard any claim that abolition of hanging, burning witches, caning children in schools, torture, stoning, flogging, keel-hauling and stocks are "morally orthogonal" with considerable suspicion.
There no abolishion of torture anyone in the US. Some clever people ran a campaign in last decade that eroded the consensus that torture is always wrong. At the same time the US hasn't reproduced burning witches.
That's not the case. The United States signed and ratified the United Nations Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment.
Last year the US blackmailed the UK demanding that the UK either violates the United Nations Convention against torture or that the US will stop giving the UK intelligence about possible terrorist plots that might kill UK citizens. The US under the Obama administration doesn't only violate the document themselves but also it also blackmails other countries to violate it as well.
Just because it is done by the government doesn't make it legal.
Right - but it has been banned elsewhere:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Convention_on_Human_Rights#Article_3_-_torture
I'm happy to see those things abolished too, but since I'm not a moral realist I can't see how to build a useful model of "moral progress".
According to:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_realism
...this involves attributing truth and falsity to moral statements - whereas it seems more realistic to say that moral truth has a subjective component.
However, the idea of moral progress does not mean there is "one true morality".
It just means that some moralities are better than others. The moral landscape could have many peaks - not just one.
I see no problem with the concept of moral progress. The idea that all moralities are of equal merit seems like totally inexcusable cultural relativism to me. Politically correct, perhaps - but also silly.
Morality is about how best to behave. We have a whole bunch of theory from evolutionary biology that relates to that issue - saying what goals organisms have - which actions are most likely to attain them - how individual goals conflict with goals that are seen acceptable to society - and so on. Some of it will be a reflection of historical accidents - while other parts of it will be shared with most human cultures - and most alien races.
My position on these things is currently very close to that set out in THE TERRIBLE, HORRIBLE, NO GOOD, VERY BAD TRUTH ABOUT MORALITY AND WHAT TO DO ABOUT IT.
Well, I hope I explained how a denial of "moral realism" was quite compatible with the idea of moral progress.
Since that was your stated reason for denying moral progress, do you disagree with my analysis, or do you have a new reason for objecting to moral progress, or have you changed your mind about it?
I certainly don't think there is anything wrong with the idea of moral progress in principle.
Finding some alien races, would throw the most light on the issue of convergent moral evolution - but in the mean time, our history, and the behaviour of other animals (e.g. dolphins) do offer some support for the idea, it seems to me.
Conway Morris has good examples of convergent evolution. It is a common phenomenon - and convergent moral evolution would not be particularly surprising.
If moral behaviour arises in a space which is subject to attractors, then some moral systems will be more widespread than others. If there is one big attractor, then moral realism would have a concrete basis.
No, sorry, I don't see it at all. When you say "some moralities are better than others", better by what yardstick? If you're not a moral realist, then everyone has their own yardstick.
I really recommend against ever using the thought-stopping phrase "political correctness" ever for any purpose, but I absolutely reject the "cultural relativism" that you attribute to me as a result, by the way. Someone performing a clitorectomy may be doing the right thing by their own lights, but by my lights they're doing totally the wrong thing, and since my lights are what I care about I'm quite happy to step in and stop them if I have the power to, or to see them locked up for it.
To continue with your analogy, moral realists claim there is one true yardstick. If you deny that it doesn't mean you can't measure anything, and that all attempts are useless. For example, people could still use yardsticks if they were approximately the same length.
I'm still not catching it. There isn't one true yardstick, but there has been moral progress. I'm guessing that this is against a yardstick which sounds a bit more "objective" when you state it, such as "maximizing happiness" or "maximising human potential" or "reducing hypocrisy" or some such. But you agree that thinking that such a yardstick is a good one is still a subjective, personal value judgement that not everyone will share, and it's still only against such a judgement that there can be moral progress, no?
I don't expect everyone to agree about morality. However, there are certainly common elements in the world's moral systems - common in ways that are not explicable by cultural common descent.
Cultural evolution is usually even more blatantly directional than DNA evolution is. One obvious trend is moral evolution is its increase in size. Caveman morality was smaller than most modern moralities.
Cultural evolution also exhibits convergent evolution - like DNA evolution does.
Most likely, like DNA evolution, it will eventually slow down - as it homes in on an deep, isolated optimum.
If there is one such optimum, and many systems eventually find it, moral realism would have a pretty good foundation. If there were many different optima with wildly-different moralities, it would not. Probably an intermediate position is most realistic - with advanced moral systems agreeing on a many things - but not everything.
Additionally, the lengths of the yardsticks could be standardized to make them better - for example, as has actually occurred, by tying the units of "yards" to the previously-standardized metric system.
I was criticising the idea that "all moralities are of equal merit". I was not attributing that idea to you. Looking at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_relativism
...it looks like I used the wrong term.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_relativism
...looks slightly better - but still is not quite the concept I was looking for - I give up for the moment.
I'm not sure if there's standard jargon for "all moralities are of equal merit" (I'm pretty sure that's isomorphic to moral nihilism, anyway). However, people tend to read various sorts of relativism that way, and it's not uncommon in discourse to see "Cultural relativism" to be associated with such a view.
Believing that all moralities are of equal merit is a particularly insane brand of moral realism.
What I was thinking of was postmodernism - in particular the sometimes-fashionable postmodern conception that all ideas are equally valid. It is a position sometimes cited in defense of the idea that science is just another belief system.
Thanks for that link: I had seen that mentioned before and had wanted to read it.
I've been reading that (I'm on page 87), and I haven't gotten to a part where he explains how that makes moral progress meaningless. Why not just define moral progress sort of as extrapolated volition (without the "coherent" part)? You don't even have to reference convergent moral evolution.
I don't think it mentions moral progress. It just seems obvious that if there is no absolute morality, then the only measures against which there has been progress are those that we choose.
Of course it isn't "objective" or absolute. I already disclaimed moral realism (by granting arguendo the validity of the linked thesis). Why does it follow that you "can't see how to build a useful model of 'moral progress'"? Must any model of moral progress be universal?
If you're talking about progress relative to my values, then absolutely there has been huge progress.
I'm not talking specifically about that. Mainly what I'm wondering is what exactly motivated you to say "can't see how ..." in the first place. What makes a measure of progress that you choose (or is chosen based on some coherent subset of human moral values, etc.) somehow ... less valid? not worthy of being used? something else?