Wednesday 24 November 2010

Morning Scepticism: Moral Progress

One reason I'm sceptical of those who say there's no such thing as morality is that there's been great progress in the flourishing of the human condition over the last few centuries. If morality was nothing more than a cultural construct, then there shouldn't be any clear direction to changes through time. Looking back especially over the last few hundred years there's been a clear trend towards improvements in the quality of life for as many people as possible. While there's always more work to be done, the cultural relativistic implications clearly don't match with the data. It's a failed hypothesis in the most fundamental sense as it simply doesn't explain the data and is even contradicted by it.

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