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Is There Progress in Morality?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 January 2009

Dale Jamieson
Dale Jamieson
Affiliation:
Carleton College
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Abstract

My question, which is central to the business of moral philosophy, is implicitly addressed by many philosophers, yet explicitly addressed by only a few. In this paper I address the question head-on, and propose a qualified affirmative answer.

First, however, it is important to be clear about what is meant by ‘morality’ and ‘progress’, and what the meaning of ‘is’ is. My characterizations will not be exact, but I hope they will be precise enough to specify a domain that can be productively investigated.

Type
Articles
Information
Utilitas , Volume 14 , Issue 3 , November 2002 , pp. 318 - 338
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2002

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References

1 But see my Morality's Progress: Essays on Humans, Other Animals, and the Rest of Nature, Oxford, 2002, ch. 2Google Scholar.

2 A cautionary note: the Naïve Conception does not imply that claims about moral progress require a complete ordering of states of affairs within a universe of discourse; a partial ordering can be sufficient. For example, we may know that A is better than B, but be clueless about C's relation to either A or B, yet we could claim that moral progress had occurred in the transition from B to A.

3 Kant, I., ‘An Old Question Raised Again: Is the Human Race Constantly Progressing?’, Kant on History, ed. Beck, L. W., Indianapolis, IN, 1963, p. 151Google Scholar.

4 See Herman, B., The Practice of Moral Judgement, Cambridge, MA, 1993, ch. 10Google Scholarfor some reminders that Kant is not, in the deepest sense, a deontologist.

5 For further discussion of moral realism, see Morality's Progress, ch. 16.

6 See Morality's Progress, chs. 14–16; also Singer, P., The Expanding Circle: Ethics and Sociobiology, New York, 1981Google Scholar; Gibbard, A., Wise Choices, Apt Feelings, Oxford, 1990Google Scholar; and Nozick, R., Invariances: The Structure of the Objective World Cambridge, 2001Google Scholar.

7 A fairly standard definition of ‘fitness’ can be found in Mayr, E., One Long Argument: Charles Darwin and the Genesis of Modern Evolutionary Thought, Cambridge, MA, 1991, p. 189Google Scholar: ‘[t]he relative ability of an organism to survive and transmit its genes to the gene pool of the next generation’ (some would omit the words ‘survive and’).

8 There is a debate about just how objective 'secondary” properties such as colour and taste really are. For an introduction to the literature, see Byrne, A. and Hilbert, D. R., Readings on Color, Cambridge, MA, 1997Google Scholar.

9 This argument roughly follows Mackie, J. L., Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong, Harmondsworth, 1977Google Scholar. Of course, not everyone is persuaded. For an introduction to the literature, see Sayre-McCord, G., Essays on Moral Realism, Ithaca, NY, 1988Google Scholar.

10 There are interesting ways of trying to link evolutionary epistemology to realism, but the practical nature of our assessments of value appears to present a special obstacle to providing such an account for the moral domain.

11 Singer, , The Expanding Circle, p. 88Google Scholar.

12 Singer, , The Expanding Circle, p. 93Google Scholar. The idea that the demand for reasons is a demand for a justification that can be accepted by others is surprisingly similar to Scanlon's formulation of contractualism in ‘Contractualism and Utilitarianism’, Utilitarianism and Beyond, ed. Sen, A. and Williams, B.. Cambridge, 1982CrossRefGoogle Scholar. In that paper Scanlon suggests that utilitarians have no account of distinctively moral reasons; he cites other writings of Singer's, but not The Expanding Circle.

13 Singer, , The Expanding Circle, p. 114Google Scholar.

14 Ibid., p. 120. Singer's story of the way reason brought him to his animal liberationist position is an instance of this narrative; see his Animal Liberation, New York, 2002Google Scholar.

15 A similar story, derived from Hume, can be told about what Baier, Annette calls ‘the progress of the sentiments’ (in A Progress of Sentiments: Reflections on Hume's Treatise, Cambridge, MA, 1991)Google Scholar, and what Rorty, Richard calls ‘sentimental education’ (in ‘Human Rights, Rationality, and Sentimentality’, Truth and Progress: Philosophical Papers Volume 3, New York, 1998)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Indeed, I think the sentimentalist story is more plausible than the rationalist one. For discussion, see Haidt, J., ‘The Emotional Dog and the Rational Tail: A Social Intuitionist Approach to Moral Judgment’, Psychological Review, cviii (2001)Google Scholar.

16 See Ruse, M., ‘The Significance of Evolution’, A Companion to Ethics, ed. Singer, P., Oxford, 1991Google Scholar, for discussion of this fallacy.

17 The idea of the ‘selfish gene’ was popularized by Dawkins, Richard in The Selfish Gene, New York, 1978Google Scholar. I place ‘selfish’ and ‘interests’ in shudder quotes because it is a facon de parler at best to suppose that genes have interests and are selfish. For discussion, see Singer, , The Expanding Circle, pp. 126–33Google Scholar.

18 For a defence of this principle see McKibben, B., Maybe One: A Personal and Environmental Argument for Single Child Families, New York, 1998Google Scholar.

19 However, there are cases, some of which are predicted by Hamilton's theory of inclusive fitness, in which reducing fertility can increase biological fitness. Among humans this can occur when it enables parents to invest more heavily in fewer offspring, increasing the chances of each successfully reproducing, thus increasing the overall likelihood that the parents' genes will be represented in future generations. Despite these cases, it is clear that many instances of voluntary fertility reduction diminish agents' biological fitness. See Hamilton, W. D., ‘The Genetical Evolution of Social Behavior I and II’, Journal of Theoretical Biology, vii (1963)Google Scholar.

20 As quoted in Dugatkin, L., Cheating Monkeys and Citizen Bees, Cambridge, MA, 1999, p. 140Google Scholar.

21 There are many researchers responsible for developing the picture that I sketch below, but see especially Sober, E. and Wilson, D. S., Unto Others: The Evolution and Psychology of Unselfish Behavior, Cambridge, MA, 1998Google Scholar, and Boehm, C., Hierarchy in the Forest, Cambridge, MA, 1999Google Scholar.

22 Flack, J. and Waal, F. de, ‘Primate Evolutionary Continuities vs. Human Uniqueness’, Journal of Consciousness Studies, vii (2000)Google Scholar.

23 There is a point to distinguishing between the terms on each side of the contrast but for present purposes we can be fairly relaxed in our usage without causing much trouble.

24 Perhaps this is analogous to the idea that science will come to an end with the completion of the true picture of the universe. See Horgan, J., The End of Science: Facing the Limits of Knowledge in the Twilight of the Scientific Age, Reading, 1996Google Scholar.

25 Nagel, Thomas, The View From Nowhere, Oxford, 1986, p. 186Google Scholar.

26 The metaphor of harmony is different from the metaphor of balance. While balancing might involve one perspective outweighing another, harmonizing occurs when ‘the claims of objectivity … come to form a … part of each individual's conception of himself’ (ibid.).

27 Thus I reject as implausible, normative theories such as absolute deontology which have no place for value theory, since they hold that morality consists entirely in conformity to exceptionless rules.

28 For those who think that the class of normative theories is a superset of the class of moral theories it should be clear from the context that the normative theories I am concerned with here are moral theories. I refrain from saying this in the main body of the text since, on my view, a normative theory is only part of a moral theory. But these are pedantic points, not worth pursuing for present purposes. However, before abandoning pedantry, I want to add that prevalence and distribution may be only two of the relevant dimensions which distinguish actions in choice situations.

29 While my rhetoric here may sound foundationalist I think that this way of representing a theory of value is consistent with alternative models, such as coherentist ones. I could just as well speak of ‘central’ and ‘peripheral’ values as deep and shallow ones, though it would be stylistically awkward to do so. For more on foundationalism in ethics, see my ‘Method in Moral Theory’, Singer, ed.

30 This view has been endorsed by such thinkers as Leopold, Aldo (A Sand County Almanac, Oxford, 1949, pp. 201–3)Google Scholar, Singer, Peter(The Expanding Circle, pp. 111–24)Google Scholar, Richard Rorty (Rorty, pp. 177 f.), and Robert Nozick (Nozick, pp. 278–80).

31 For an amusing attack on this view see Blackburn, Simon, Being Good: An Introduction to Ethics, Oxford, 2001Google Scholar.

32 For a fascinating discussion see Linebaugh, P., and Marcus, R., The Many-Headed Hydra: Sailors, Slaves, Commoners, and the Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic, Boston, MA, 2001Google Scholar.

33 Cf. the discussion of the post-modern mullah in my ‘The Poverty of Postmodern Theory’, University of Colorado Law Review, lxii (1991)Google Scholar.

34 Rawls, J., A Theory of Justice, Cambridge, MA, 1971, p. 325Google Scholar. See Hurka, T., Perfectionism, Oxford, 1993Google Scholar, for a slightly different characterization of perfectionism and a thorough discussion.

35 Although there is intense scholarly debate about how to interpret Nietzche, he sometimes seems to embrace brutal perfectionism, for example when he writes that ‘the wretchedness of struggling men must grow still greater in order to make possible the production of a world of art for a small number of Olympian men.’ For discussion of Nietzsche's views in this regard, and relevant citations, see Glover, J., Humanity: A Moral History of the Twentieth Century, London, 1999, ch. 2Google Scholar.

36 By ‘affecting paradoxically’ I mean that, contrary to what most of us believe, increases in suffering would indicate moral progress rather than regression.

37 Or more strongly still, Without slavery, no Greek state, no Greek art and science; without slavery, no Roman Empire. Without Hellenism and the Roman Empire at the base, also no modern Europe' (Williams, B., Shame and Necessity, Berkeley, 1993, p. 171Google Scholar, quoting Friedrich Engels).

38 Casas, B. De Las, The Devastation of the Indies, Baltimore, 1974, p. 78Google Scholar.

39 Stannard, D., American Holocaust, New York, 1992, p. 95Google Scholar. The demography of the Americas prior to European contact is a highly contested and politically charged subject. Stannard is not an extreme voice in the discussion, but even if his estimate is too high by an order of magnitude, the numbers are still horrifying. For a recent discussion of some of these issues see Krech, S. III , The Ecological Indian: Myth and History, New York, 1999Google Scholar.

40 Nor will any old causal relation do, as I am grateful to Marsha Mason for reminding me. Suppose that all the same people exist at the same levels of happiness in state of affairs A and its consequent, state of affairs B, but that there is an additional slightly happy person who also exists in B. This would not be sufncient for supposing that the transition from A to B constitutes moral progress. The moral of the story is that we cannot simply breed our way to moral progress.

41 There are other complications regarding the temporal dimensions of judgements of moral progress. Suppose, for example, that the world is getting very bad, very fast, but at one point it improves slightly, but that this improvement is a necessary condition for the world becoming so bad, so fast. I doubt that we would say that this brief bump up constitutes moral progress.

42 But could we not say that morality had advanced to a higher level in fifth century BC Athens than in fifteenth century Peru? Such general claims about comparative moral development escape some of the difficulties that attach to similar claims about moral progress, but also invite some new objections. While the idea of moral progress with respect to a dimension can be made reasonably clear, those who speak in metaphors of‘higher’ and ‘lower’ moralities ‘advancing’ and ‘receding’ have got some explaining to do.

43 In ‘Seven Strictures on Similarity’, Problems and Projects, Indianapolis, 1972Google Scholar.

44 In one of his movies Woody Allen complains that life seems meaningless since the Earth will someday fall into the sun. The humour arises from the character's failure to contextualize these facts. A lot of philosophy is funny in just this way.

45 See Glover, pt. 5. Of course, excessive ‘localism’ is not itself without risk. What is wanted (as usual) is something ‘just right’.

46 Rorty, p. 175. This remark seems to suggest that just as Europeans and Americans are leaving the world in the dust when it comes to economic progress, so they dominate with respect to moral progress as well.

47 The True and Only Heaven: Progress and its Critics, New York, 1991, p. 13Google Scholar.

48 ‘Hypocrisy is the tribute vice pays to virtue’, Brinton, C., A History of Western Morals, New York, 1990, p. 26Google Scholar, quoting La Rochefoucauld.

49 See Singer, ACompanion to Ethics, pt. 2 on the ubiquity of the Golden Rule.

50 Of course if egalitarianism were the only criterion on which moral progress were assessed, then we might think that it has been a downhill slide since humans lived as hunter-gatherers.

51 I am reminded of a girl in my school who was morally outraged by air pollution when most of us had never even heard the term. We were living in what we regarded as paradise: Northern California in the early 1960s. We had to strain to see the decrements of visibility that so outraged her. Finally, under her tutelage, we began to see what she was seeing, then to see it as a bad, then as a harm, and then as a moral problem. Thank you, Claudia Winckleman.

52 It should be obvious that this fourth stage has not been reached with respect to our attitudes toward most humans.

53 See also Glover; Williams; Moody-Adams, M. M., Fieldwork in Familiar Places: Morality, Culture, and Philosophy, Cambridge, MA, 1997Google Scholar; ‘The Idea of Moral Progress’, Metaphilosophy, xxx(1999)Google Scholar; Jamieson, D. and VanderWerf, K., Cultural Barriers to Behavior Change: General Recommendations and Resources for State Pollution Prevention Programs, A Report to US EPA, Boulder, CO, 1993Google Scholar; Preventing Pollution: Perspectives on Cultural Barriers and Facilitators, A Report to US EPA, Boulder, CO, 1995Google Scholar.

54 Kimberly Smith tells this story quite convincingly in her ‘Storytelling, Sympathy and Moral Judgement in American Abolitionism’, Journal of Political Philosophy, vi (1998)Google Scholar.

55 See my Morality's Progress, chs. 4–6, 14, 16.

56 Rorty, p. 204.

57 This essay revises and develops material that appears as ch. 1 in Morality's Progress. My thinking on these questions has advanced as a result of discussions with the 4M (Minnesota Monthly Moralphilosophy Meeting), and the Oxford Philosophical Society. I have been especially helped by M. Bacharach, J. Broome, E. Fricker, S. Keller, G. Lang, B. Longuenesse, K. Renshaw, P. Singer, E. Sober, D. Sloan Wilson, and V. Tiberius.