= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
- You're not making arguments.
- The points you raise are not responsive to the points that either he or I made.
- If it increases total aggregate utility. Tribes were small, there weren't very many people. I'm also not sure how happy most tribes were. Additionally, bad moral societies might be necessary to transition to awesome ones.
- You conflate moral and economic progress in your second paragraph.
- A financial system which collapses probably isn't too healthy. It still might have improved things overall through its pre-collapse operations though.
Universal pay does not even seem possible now.
= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d){kind=logo}
My first reaction is to want to say that economic progress is an increase in purchasing power. However, purchasing power is measured with reference to the utility of goods. That would be fine as a solution, except that those definitions would mean that it would be literally impossible for an increase in economic progress to be bad on utilitarian grounds. That's not what "economic progress" is generally taken to mean, so I won't use that definition.
Instead, I'll say that economic progress is an increase in the ability to produce goods, whether those goods are good or bad. This increase can be either numerical or qualitative, I don't care. Now, it might not be possible to quantify this precisely, but that's not necessary to determine that economic progress occurs. Clearly, we are now farther economically progressed than we were in the Dark Ages.
Moral progress would be measured depending on the moral theory you're utilizing. I would use a broad sort of egoism, personally, but most people here would use utilitarianism.
With an egoist framework, you could keep track of how happy or sad you were directly. You could also measure the prevalence of factors that tend to make you happy and then subtract the prevalence of factors that tend to make you sad (while weighting for relative amounts of happiness and sadness, of course), in order to get a more objective account of your own happiness.
With a utilitarian framework, you would measure the prevalence of things that tend to make all people happy, and then subtract the prevalence of things that tend to make all people sad. If there was an increase in the number of happy people, then that would mean moral progress in the eyes of a utilitarian.
You make no argument. You merely ask a question. If you have a general counterargument or want to refute the specifics of any of my points, feel free. So far, you haven't done anything like that. Also, although it might not be possible to quantify economic or moral progress precisely, we can probably do it well enough for most practical purposes. I don't understand the purpose of the points you're trying to raise here.
My original post refuted the statement:
You interjected:
You do not like the questions, the Socratic? Ok, I asserted the basis of the argument and the point of the questions:
A clear, unbiased definition of moral or economic progress does not exist.
You present models for deciding both. There exists models where economic progress varies inversely with moral progress, such as possible outcomes from the utilitarian perspective that are covered in ethics 101 at most colleges, and the manifest reality of a system where economic progress has been used for justifying an abundance of atrocities. There also exist models in either category which define progress in entirely different directions and so any statement of progress is inherently biased.
There is a link between economic states/systems and moral conditions, and it appeared that the author of the statement: "Moral progress proceeds from economic progress." may have been oversimplifying the issue to a point of of making it unintelligible.
You mentioned wealth which implies an inherent bias also. I can personally assert a different version of wealth which excludes much of what most people consider wealth. If most people think wealth includes assets like cash or gold which I see as having an immoral nature and so their idea of accumulating wealth is immoral in my pov. (I do not include a lengthy moral case, but rather assert such a case exists). So if you see progress and wealth as interrelated then I would ask for a definition of wealth?
You also assert that economic progress is an increased ability to produce goods. I assert that there are many modes of production of which the current industrial mode finds value in quantity, as you state is the measure. Two biases arise:
1 - The bias inherent to the mode: quantity is not the only measure of progress. Competing values include quality in aesthetics, ergonomics, environmental impact, functionality, modular in use (consider open source values). I do not think having more stuff is a sign of economic progress and I am not alone in finding that the measure you have asserted says nothing of "progress" - you of course argue differently and thus we can say one measure or another of progress may differ and are thus inherently biased.
2- What mode of production is more progressed? I do not think industrialization is progress. I see many flaws in the results. Too much damage from that mode imho. I am not here to argue that position but rather to assert it exists.
Is my point about the bias inherent in describing progress clear, or do you think that there exists some definition we all agree upon as to what progress in any area is?