Notes on the possibility of moral progress

Michael Dickens, writing on LessWrong, argues that moral progress is possible—but it requires settling certain factual questions first. Most moral disagreements look fundamentally unsolvable: how to weigh one person's happiness against another's, or whether to help many people a little versus few people a lot. But Dickens suggests these disputes might actually rest on factual grounds we can investigate. How does consciousness work? Is personal identity metaphysically real? Can our actions have infinite consequences? Settle those questions, and competing moral theories could converge. Dickens walks through examples: should we maximize human welfare or preserve humanity itself, does helping one identifiable person matter more than helping many anonymous people, are two identical experiences worth twice as much as one? Not all disagreements will dissolve this easily, he concedes—but philosophy itself can sharpen its methods, and historical evidence suggests it already has.

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