One form of moral progress that doesn't look the same as "random walk plus retrospective teleology", is the case where some inconsistency of moral views is resolved.
For example, some dudes say that it's self-evident that all men are created equal. Then somebody notices that this doesn't really jive with the whole slavery thing. So at least some of what gets called moral progress is just people learning to live up to their own stated principles.
Another way of looking at it is that there is little difference between the terminal values of me vs a mediaeval lord, but the lord is very confused about what instrumental values best achieve his terminal values (he wants the best for the peasants, but thinks that that is achieved by the application of strong discipline to prevent idleness, so values severe discipline).
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I meant, our behaviour being closer to our CEV than Homer's behaviour was to his CEV, if that makes sense. (Are you thinking of anything in particular about Homer or was it an arbitrary example?)
I wouldn't, but I can roughly guess what the result would be. (Likewise, I couldn't implement Solomonoff induction on any brain, but I still guess general relativity has less complexity than MOND.) If I had no way of guessing whether a given action is more likely to be good or to be bad, how should I ever decide what to do?
I don't think that makes sense. Also, I am pretty sure that Xenophon's behavior (massacre and pillage the bad guys and abduct their women) was a lot closer to his moral ideal than our behavior is to Xenophon's moral ideal.
Further, the behavior Xenophon describes others of the ten thousand performing is astonishingly close to his moral ideal, in that astonishing acts of heroism were routine, while the behavior I observe around me exhibits major disconnect from our purported moral ideals, for example the John Derbyshire incident, though, of course, Xenophon was doubtless selective in what incidents he though worthy to record.