Do social mores progress?
We have drawn two rather striking distinctions between pre-science and philosophy in the previous section. The first distinction is not fatal to the notion of progress in philosophy, where 'progress' is understood in a scientific way. Philosophy might still be able simply to adopt the razor of disagreement through a change in the culture of philosophers. The second distinction, however, does seem to be fatal, at least for progress in abstract theorising about ethics. Normative ethics is not capable of forming a triumph of one school over another. It does not seem possible that any advantage of any one school could be striking enough to persuade the majority of ethicists to adhere to it instead of its competitors. First, insufficient commonality exists between the foundational assumptions of the schools for them to be commensurable. Science forms a sort of commensuration between the pre-paradigmatic schools through the use of predictions. But nothing like predictions can exist for ethics. Human intuitions are simply too malleable to allow that the 'discovery' of any intuition we have to a new situation, real or imagined, is anything other than our persuasion by the theory we propose. People proposing alternate theories seem just as easily persuaded by their own claims, resulting in no clear advantage. There is therefore no non-coercive way of adjudicating between competing ethical schools for the selection of a paradigm.
Is any kind of progress possible for ethics, then? If by 'ethics' what we mean is the abstract theorising conducted by academics at universities, then it seems that this is impossible, at least on its own. But what if by 'ethics' we mean actual social norms practised by people in the real world--ethos rather than ethics? Then I think that there is evidence that it is in fact possible. Note, however, that it is not possible to reduce the first kind of ethics to the second, because, say, it is always possible, in principle, for an entire society in some ways to be unjust. For this reason, abstract theorising will always have its place, even if only to offer critical alternatives to people who are dissatisfied with their society in some way. But if an entire society is unjust, then for the ethos of a people to progress, three things must happen. First, a critical mass of people must actually recognise this fact somehow (perhaps by abstract thought or theory?). Second, the society must initiate, at some point, a social reform that brings the practices in question into line with what is newly thought to be moral. Third, that society must never return to the old practices again, at least not on its own initiative. For example, some external calamity, such as a holocaust or being conquered by a barbaric people, might be sufficient to return a society to a darker age. But in order for a change to be considered a progression, the society must display some natural tendency against reversion.
Note that this is no different from the requirements for the progress of Kuhnian science. First, the scientific community must actually recognise the problems that exist with a given paradigm. Second, that community must initiate, at some point, a paradigm shift that results in a new paradigm that removes or reduces those problems. Third, the old paradigm must never again be returned to, because of the original problems that caused it to be supplanted in the first place. This is indeed what happens in science. The scientific community does recognise the problems inherent in a paradigm as more and more facts come to light that the paradigm cannot explain--these are called "anomalies". When enough anomalies accumulate, a crisis emerges that makes the culture ripe to accept a new paradigm that will explain the new facts along with the old. Finally, because the new paradigm has the greater explanatory power, the old paradigm will never be used again. My criteria for the progress of social mores are therefore the same as those employed for scientific theories.
We will investigate evidence of progress in social mores in the next section(s). Before we proceed, however, a caveat must be made. To say that a social more progresses is not to make any claim about whether the practice endorsed by the old more dies out completely. Some immorality may be quite indefinitely sustainable, and even infinitely sustainable for so long as there is a society at all. For example, one expert estimates that the "captive labour" market today organised by people-smugglers represents twice the number of people taken from Africa in 350 years of slavery1.
There are, however, two points to be noted about this fact. (1) The practice of captive labour is illegal and almost universally deemed immoral today. Yet in the nineteenth century of the US, for example, the legality and morality of slavery was still an open question hotly disputed. Therefore, in this respect, there seems to have been progress in our mores relative to slavery. (2) The statistics comparing the number of people in the captive labour market to the number of people taken from Africa miss two things: (a) There were many other kinds of slaves in history besides people taken from Africa, which therefore makes the overall numbers of slaves in history much higher than this statistic would suggest. For example, most ancient Greek households had slaves, who were far more likely of Mediterranean than African descent. (b) An enormous increase in the population has obviously occurred in the last century and a half. This would easily result in numbers of slaves today comparable with what has occurred in the past, masking the fact that the percentage of slaves is now far lower. Therefore, one can still argue that progress in norms and in practices in this area has been observed.
1Film, Dying to Leave, dir. Chris Hilton and Aaron Woolf, Hilton Cordell Productions, 2003.
Is any kind of progress possible for ethics, then? If by 'ethics' what we mean is the abstract theorising conducted by academics at universities, then it seems that this is impossible, at least on its own. But what if by 'ethics' we mean actual social norms practised by people in the real world--ethos rather than ethics? Then I think that there is evidence that it is in fact possible. Note, however, that it is not possible to reduce the first kind of ethics to the second, because, say, it is always possible, in principle, for an entire society in some ways to be unjust. For this reason, abstract theorising will always have its place, even if only to offer critical alternatives to people who are dissatisfied with their society in some way. But if an entire society is unjust, then for the ethos of a people to progress, three things must happen. First, a critical mass of people must actually recognise this fact somehow (perhaps by abstract thought or theory?). Second, the society must initiate, at some point, a social reform that brings the practices in question into line with what is newly thought to be moral. Third, that society must never return to the old practices again, at least not on its own initiative. For example, some external calamity, such as a holocaust or being conquered by a barbaric people, might be sufficient to return a society to a darker age. But in order for a change to be considered a progression, the society must display some natural tendency against reversion.
Note that this is no different from the requirements for the progress of Kuhnian science. First, the scientific community must actually recognise the problems that exist with a given paradigm. Second, that community must initiate, at some point, a paradigm shift that results in a new paradigm that removes or reduces those problems. Third, the old paradigm must never again be returned to, because of the original problems that caused it to be supplanted in the first place. This is indeed what happens in science. The scientific community does recognise the problems inherent in a paradigm as more and more facts come to light that the paradigm cannot explain--these are called "anomalies". When enough anomalies accumulate, a crisis emerges that makes the culture ripe to accept a new paradigm that will explain the new facts along with the old. Finally, because the new paradigm has the greater explanatory power, the old paradigm will never be used again. My criteria for the progress of social mores are therefore the same as those employed for scientific theories.
We will investigate evidence of progress in social mores in the next section(s). Before we proceed, however, a caveat must be made. To say that a social more progresses is not to make any claim about whether the practice endorsed by the old more dies out completely. Some immorality may be quite indefinitely sustainable, and even infinitely sustainable for so long as there is a society at all. For example, one expert estimates that the "captive labour" market today organised by people-smugglers represents twice the number of people taken from Africa in 350 years of slavery1.
There are, however, two points to be noted about this fact. (1) The practice of captive labour is illegal and almost universally deemed immoral today. Yet in the nineteenth century of the US, for example, the legality and morality of slavery was still an open question hotly disputed. Therefore, in this respect, there seems to have been progress in our mores relative to slavery. (2) The statistics comparing the number of people in the captive labour market to the number of people taken from Africa miss two things: (a) There were many other kinds of slaves in history besides people taken from Africa, which therefore makes the overall numbers of slaves in history much higher than this statistic would suggest. For example, most ancient Greek households had slaves, who were far more likely of Mediterranean than African descent. (b) An enormous increase in the population has obviously occurred in the last century and a half. This would easily result in numbers of slaves today comparable with what has occurred in the past, masking the fact that the percentage of slaves is now far lower. Therefore, one can still argue that progress in norms and in practices in this area has been observed.
Notes
1Film, Dying to Leave, dir. Chris Hilton and Aaron Woolf, Hilton Cordell Productions, 2003.
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